For the first time to-night, as woman, as flesh and blood, she was adorable, and she owed this transformation, not to him, no, not in the tiniest fraction of a degree to him, but to some one else, some dull boor without niceties or deftness, who had stormed into her life within the week.

Who was it?
He had got to know.

But Joan was hardly thinking of Escobar.

Her eyes were turned from him.
"He has set me free from many vanities and follies.

If I am grieved and ashamed now, I owe it thankfully to him.