her than the ear
drums. Then, before the lady replied, while the sound of my own voice
saying "B-o-w-f-e-e" seemed to reverberate through the apartment, I
suddenly comprehended the spirit of Charleston: understood that,
compared with Charleston, Boston is as a rough mining camp, while New
York hardly exists at all, being a mere miasma of vulgarity.

There was a long silence, in which the lady to whom I had spoken gazed
from the window at the rainy twilight. Her silence, I am persuaded, was
not intended to rebuke me; she was not desirous of crushing me; she was
merely stunned. Indeed, when at last she spoke, there was in her tone
something of gentleness.

"The name," she said, "is Beaufoy--B-e-a-u-f-o-y. It is of Huguenot
origin."

Passionately I wished for an earthquake--one that might cause the floor
to open beneath me, or the roof to fall through and blot me from her
sight. How to get away?--that was my one thought. To cover my
embarrassment, I tried to make small-talk about a medallion of an
Emperor of France, which hung upon the paneling. The lady said it had
been given to an ancestor of the Beaufoys by the Emperor himself. That,
for some reason, seemed to make things rather worse. I wished I had not
dragged the Emperor into the conversation.

"It is getting dark," I said. "It is time we were going."

This the lady did not dispute.

Of our actual farewells and exit from that house, I remember not a
detail, save that, as we departed, I knew that we should never see this
lady again; that for her I no longer existed, and that in my downfall I
had dragged my companion with me. The next thing I definitely recollect
is walking swiftly up Meeting Street beside him, in the rain and
darkness of late afternoon. All the way back to the hotel we strode side
by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our
rooms.

Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my
bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into
a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In
the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I
delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one
sleeve-vent, above the cuff.

"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he
demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"

"I don't always," I answered apologetically.

"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: