ness through many women. Jenny, when
she looked at him full, was aware less of his eyes than of her own,
which seemed to her to be kindling in the dry sparks that were radiated
by his; and even as she felt scorched by the brain which was thus
expressed, her own eyes would melt, as it were, to meet appropriately
the liquid softness that succeeded. His lips were never remarkably red,
and as the evening advanced they adopted the exact shade of his
complexion, which from paleness took on the lifeless monotone of color
that is seen in the rain-soaked petal of a pink rose. Danby's mouth
curved upwards, and when he smiled, he only smiled on one side of his
face. The immediate expression he conveyed was that of profound
lassitude changed by any topic of sly licentiousness to a startling
concentration.

A pictorial representation of the party would have some decorative
value. The two brothers had ordered red mullet, which lay scattered
about their plates in mingled hues of cornelian, rose and tarnished
copper. Their wine was Lacrima Christi of the precise tint to carry on
the scheme of color. Jenny and Irene were drinking champagne whose pale
amber sparkled against the prevailing luster, contrasting and lightening
the arrangement of metallic tints, just as Jenny's fair hair set off and
was at the same time enhanced by Irene's copper-brown. As a group of
revellers the four of them composed into a rich enough study in _genre_,
and the fanciful observer would extract from the position of the two men
a certain potentiality for romantic events as, somewhat hunched and
looking up from down-turned heads, they both sat with legs outstretched
to the extent of their length. The more imaginative observer would
perceive in the group something unhealthy, something _faisande_, an air
of too deliberate enjoyment that seemed to imply a perfect knowledge of
the limitations of human pleasure. These men and girls aimed no arrow of
fleeting gayety to pierce in a straight, sharp course the heart of the
present. Sophistication clung to them, and weariness. That senescent
October moon which a year ago marked the end of love's halcyon would
have been a suitable light for such a party. Jenny herself had gone back
to that condition of cynicism which before the days of Maurice was due
to ignorance, but was now a profounder cynicism based on experience.
Irene had always been skeptical of emotional heights, had always
accepted life sensually without much en