nger. She
had risen, and stood with her hands clasped before her. So she was in
the habit of standing before her dancing class until the music should
begin and lead her through the measures. She was delightful so and, from
long training, entirely self-possessed.

"Good-bye," said she.

"Don't go," said Esther, in a conventional prettiness, but no such
beguilement as she had wafted through the telephone. "It's been so
pleasant meeting you."

Again Lydia had her ungodly impulse to contradict, to say: "No, it
hasn't either. You know it hasn't." But she turned away and, head a
little bent, walked out of the house, saying again, "Good-bye."

When she got out into the dusk, she went slowly, to cool down and think
it over. It wouldn't do for the colonel and Anne to see her on the swell
of such excitement, especially as she had only defeat to bring them. She
had meant to go home in a triumphant carelessness and say: "Oh, yes, I
saw her. I just walked right in. That's what you ought to have done,
Farvie. But we had it out, and I think she's ready to do the decent
thing by Jeff." No such act of virtuous triumph: she had simply been a
silly girl, and Anne would find it out. Near the corner she met the man
she had seen on her way in coming, and he looked at her again with that
solicitous air of being ready to take off his hat. She went on with a
consciousness of perhaps having achieved an indiscretion in coming out
bareheaded, and the man proceeded to Esther's door. He was expected.
Esther herself let him in.

Reardon had not planned to go to see her at that hour. He had meant to
spend it at the club, feet up, trotting over the path of custom, knowing
to a dot what men he would find there and what each would say. Old Dan
Wheeler would talk about the advisability of eating sufficient
vegetables to keep your stomach well distended. Young Wheeler would
refer owlishly to the Maries and Jennies of an opera troupe recently in
Addington, and Ollie Hastings, the oldest bore, would tell long stories,
and wheeze. But Reardon was no sooner in his seat, with his glass beside
him, than he realised he was disturbed, in some unexpected way. It might
have been the pretty girl he met going into Esther's; it might have been
the thought of Esther herself, the unheard call from her. So he left his
glass untasted and telephoned her: "You all right?" To which Esther
replied in a doubtful purr. "Want me to come up?" he asked, as he
thought, against