the other men had joined them, until even Mr. Dinwiddie was
in the procession, marching with loud stamping feet round and round the
big room. The cries became shorter, menacing, abrupt, imperative. The
high lamps cast strange shadows on their lost faces. The voices grew
hoarse, dropped to low growls, their faces changed from ferocity to a
mournful solemnity until they looked even more like primal men than
before; but they continued their marching and stamping until Gora, who,
with the other women, had begun to fear that the rhythm would bring
down the house, had the inspiration to insert a Caruso disk into the
victrola; and as those immortal notes flung themselves imperiously
across that wild scene, the primitive in the men dropped like a leaden
plummet, and they threw themselves on the floor by the fire. But they
smoked their pipes in silence. They had had something that no woman
could give them nor share, and there was an ungallant wish in every
manly heart that they had left the women at home.

Caruso was succeeded by Emma Eames, and the great lost diva by Farrar
and Scotti. Then, the concert over, a yawning party stumbled upstairs
to bed and not a sound was heard from them until the first bell rang at
seven o'clock next morning.

XLVII

"You forgot me last night."

"Yes, I did." Clavering smiled unrepentantly.

"You looked horribly primitive."

"No more so than I felt."

They were in a boat on the lake. The air was crisp and cold although
the sun blazed overhead. Clavering was happy in a disreputable old
sweater that he kept at the camp, and baggy corduroy trousers tucked
into leggins, but Mary wore an angora sweater and skirt of a vivid
grass green and a soft sport hat of the same shade, the rim turned down
over eyes that might never have looked upon life beyond these woods and
mountains. Clavering was hatless and smoked his pipe lazily as he
pulled with long slow strokes.

Other boats were on the lake, the women in bright sweaters and hats
that looked like floating autumn leaves, and the lake was liquid amber.
A breeze blew warm scents out of the woods. The water lilies had
opened to the sun and looked oddly artificial in their waxen beauty, at
the feet of those ancient trees. Stealthy footsteps behind that wall
of trees, or a sudden loud rustling, told of startled deer. The
distant peak looked to be enamelled blue and white, and the long slopes
of the nearer mountains were dark green