h coming out of the Belasco Theatre. He saw her
first and tried to avoid her, for her family and the Oglethorpes were
as one, but she caught sight of him and held out her hand.

"I shouldn't speak to you after your base desertion the other night,"
she said, smiling. "But you do look rather seedy and I prefer to
flatter myself that you really were ill."

"Was sure I was coming down with the flu," Clavering mumbled. "Of
course you know that nothing else----"

"Oh, hostesses are too canny these days to take offence. All we are
still haughty enough to demand is a decent excuse. But you really owe
me something, and besides I've been wanting to talk to you. Take me to
Pierre's for tea."

She spoke in a light tone of command. There had been a time when
issuing commands to Clavering had been her habit and he had responded
with a certain palpitation, convinced for nearly a month that Anne
Goodrich was the Clavering woman. He had known her as an awkward
schoolgirl and then as one of the prettiest and most light-hearted of
the season's debutantes, but she had never interested him until after
her return from France, where she had done admirable work in the
canteens. Then, sitting next to her at a dinner, and later for two
hours in the conservatory, he had thought her the finest girl he had
ever met. He thought so still; but although she stimulated his mind
and they had many tastes in common, he had soon realized that when
apart he forgot her and that only novelty had inspired his brief
desire. She might have everything for another man as exacting as
himself, but that unanalyzable something his own peculiar essence
demanded no woman had ever possessed until he met Mary Zattiany.

He had begun too ardently to cease his visits abruptly and, moreover,
he still found her more companionable than any woman he knew; he
continued to show her a frank and friendly devotion until an attack of
influenza sent him to the hospital for a month; when he accepted the
friendly intervention of fate and thereafter timed his occasional calls
to coincide with the hour of tea, when she was never alone. There were
no more long morning walks, no more long rides in her car, no more
hastily arranged luncheons at the Bohemian restaurants that interested
her, no more "dropping in" and long telephone conversations. He still
enjoyed a talk with her at a dinner, and she was always a pleasure to
the eye with her calm and regular features softened b