er was of plastic material. It is
doubtful whether Lorimer realized this influence; yet he was genuinely
delighted to have Thayer within easy reach once more, genuinely wishful
to have Thayer's American debut such an unqualified success that
hereafter he would regard New York as his professional home.

Lorimer rarely was garrulous; he was unusually silent during the long
drive to the Lloyd Avalons's. It was his first introduction to the
pseudo-fashionable world, for his own family had been of conservative
stock, and Beatrix and Bobby had been the first of the Danes to break
down the barriers of their own exclusive set. To be sure, he realized
that in a city like New York it was quite possible for circles of equal
choiceness to exist tangent to each other, yet in mutual ignorance of
one another; but his years abroad in slower-moving countries had not
prepared him for the countless agile performers clambering up and down
over the social trapeze. In his father's day, society had stood on an
elevated platform and watched the performers as they played leap-frog on
the ground. The performers had been as agile then as now; but their
agility had been free from any danger of a tumble. Between the ground
and the platform, there is no place of permanent rest. One must keep
moving, or else be pushed to the ground.

As a rule, people forgot that there was a Mr. Lloyd Avalons. He was a
little man with an imperial, and a total incapacity for telling the
truth. In that, he was inferior to his wife in point of social
evolution, for she had learned, from certain episodes which still filled
her with mortification, that fibbing was bad form. To Mrs. Lloyd
Avalons, her husband was a mere cipher. Placed before her, he added
nothing to her value; placed after and in the background, he multiplied
her importance tenfold. There were certain privileges accruing to a
woman with a husband, certain immunities that followed in the train of
matrimony. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons was quite willing to include the word
_obey_ in the marriage service; she had a distinct choice in regard to
whom it should refer.

To-night, Lloyd Avalons stood slightly in the rear of the elbow of his
wife who, resplendent in pale gray velvet and emeralds, was welcoming
her guests on the threshold of the music-room. Her gray eyes were
shining with a greenish light that matched the emeralds, for her lips
were set in a conventional smile, and there must be some escape for her
deligh