hamber of Deputies, the
new ambassador, even the recent improvement of the police
system. Kendal found her almost tiresome. His
half-interested replies interpreted themselves to her
after a while, and she turned their talk upon trivialities,
with a gay exhilaration which was not her frequent mood.

She asked him to come up when they arrived, with a frank
cordiality which he probably thought of as the American
way. He went up, at all events, and for the twentieth
time admired the dainty chic of the little apartment,
telling himself, also for the twentieth time, that it
was extraordinary how agreeable it was to be there
--agreeable with a distinctly local agreeableness whether
its owner happened to be also there or not. In this he
was altogether sincere, and only properly discriminating.
He spent fifteen minutes wondering at her whimsical
interest, and when she suddenly asked him if he really
thought the race _had_ outgrown its physical conditions,
he got up to go, declaring it was too bad, she must have
been working up back numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_.
At which she consented to turn their talk into its usual
personal channel, and he sat down again content.

"Doesn't the Princess Bobaloff write a charming hand!"
Elfrida said presently, tossing him a square white
envelope.

"It isn't hers if it's an invitation. She has a wretched
relation of a Frenchwoman living with her who does all
that. May I light a cigarette?"

"You know you may. It is an invitation, but I didn't
accept."

"Her soiree last night? If I'd known you had been asked
I should have missed you."

"I ought to tell you," Elfrida went on, coloring a little,
"that I was invited through Leila Van Camp--that
ridiculously rich girl, you know, they say Lucien is in
love with. The Van Camp has been affecting me a good deal
lately. She says my manners are so pleasing, and besides,
Lucien once told her she painted better than I did. The
princess is a great friend of hers."

"Why didn't you go?" Kendal asked, without any appreciable
show of curiosity. If he had been looking closely enough
he would have seen that she was waiting for his question.

"Oh, it lies somehow, that sort of thing, outside my idea
of life. I have nothing to say to it, and it has nothing
to say to me."

Kendal smiled introspectively. He saw why he had been
shown the letter. "And yet," he said, "I venture to hope
that if we had met there we might have had some little
conve