ruth and then
you dropped her like a hot potato--or a cold fish. I was surprised
when she told me you were coming here tonight, and asked her at once to
seat us three together so that Anne and I could save you from feeling
embarrassed--not that I told her that, of course. I merely said we
were such old friends we would naturally have a thousand things to talk
about. She didn't turn a hair; I'll say that much for her. But
perhaps she thinks she's playing you on a long string. She's playing
several poor fish who are here tonight."

Should he tell her? He really could stand no more. He hadn't a doubt
that the same rumor that had driven Janet to her crude attempt, to
compromise him and then blast her rival with naked words, had reached
these two older and cleverer, but hardly subtler girls, and they had
joined forces to disenchant him and make him feel the misguided young
man they no doubt believed him to be. He hated them both. They had
that for their pains. He'd never willingly see one of them again.

He longed to blurt out the truth. But his was not the right. He
glanced over at Madame Zattiany, who sat in the middle of the table's
length, receiving the intent homage of the men on either side of her
and looking more placid than any other woman in the room. . . . It
occurred to him that the rest were animated to excess, even the wives
of those two men, to whom, it was patent, they were non-existent. He
would have given his play at that moment to be able to stand up and ask
the company to drink his health and hers.

For a few moments he was left to himself, both Marian and Anne being
occupied with their neighbors, and during those moments he sensed an
atmosphere of hostility, of impending danger. He caught more than one
malicious glance directed at Mary, and once a man, in response to a
whispered remark, burst into uncontrollable laughter. Had these women
come here--but that was impossible. Even New York had its limits.
They might be icily rude to a pushing outsider, as indeed they had
every right to be, but never to one of their own. Still--to this
alarmed generation possibly Madame Zattiany was nothing more than a
foreign woman who had stormed the gates and reduced them to a mere
background. The fact that she had belonged to their mothers'
generation and had abruptly descended to theirs was enough to arouse
every instinct of self-defence. He quite understood they must hate
her, but in spite of that