call on several powerful
editors--or bring them here," he added hastily at the look of amazement
in her eyes, "and they will be more than willing to help you. They have
only to meet you----"

"That is all very well," interrupted Judge Trent, who, like the other
elderly gentlemen, was glaring at the famous young columnist who daily
laid down the law to his admiring readers. "But to raise money in large
amounts you've got to have a committee, and no committee is of any
use--for this sort of thing--without the names of fashionable women who
are as well known to our democratic public, that daily devours the
society columns, as the queens of the movies."

"Well--well--I do not know. I must think. It is not a step to take
lightly."

Clavering intercepted a flash between her eyes and Judge Trent's and the
old gentleman tightened his lips in a self-conscious smirk as he bent
over his fish.

"Damn him!" thought Clavering. "He knows the whole truth and is laughing
at us in his sleeve."

Madame Zattiany had turned the subject gracefully to European politics,
and he watched her with a detached air. Trent's attitude toward her
amused him. It was more deferential and admiring than infatuated. . . .
Whatever her charm, she was no longer in her first youth, and only unripe
fruit could sting that senescent palate. But the other two! Clavering
smiled sardonically. Dinwiddie, hanging on her every word, was hardly
eating. He was a very handsome man, in spite of his shining pate and
heavy white moustache. His features were fine and regular, his eyes, if
rather prominent, were clear and blue, his skin clean, and his figure but
little amplified. He was only sixty-two.

Osborne, who looked barely fifty, was personable and clever enough to
attract any woman. He, too, was astonishingly indifferent to the
excellent dinner, and both these gentlemen had reached an age, where, if
wary of excess for reasons of vanity and interior comfort, they derived
their sincerest enjoyment at the table.

That she possessed sex magnetism in a superlative degree in spite of her
deliberate aloofness, Clavering had, of course, been conscious from the
first. Had not every male first-nighter been conscious of it? There was
a surfeit of beauty in New York. A stranger, even if invested with
mystery, must possess the one irresistible magnet, combined with some
unusual quality of looks, to capture and hold the interest of weary New
Yorkers as she