d in town late on the day when he was to dine with
Mariana at the Polders. He entered a taxicab, and was carried smoothly
through the thick, hot air; open electric cars, ladened with damp,
pallid salespeople, passed with a harsh ringing; and the foliage in
Rittenhouse Square hung dusty and limp and still. The houses beyond, on
Nineteenth Street, where the Jannans' winter dwelling stood, were closed
and blankly boarded. The small, provisional entrance before which he
stopped opened, and a servant, out of livery, appeared. "Shall I tell
the driver to return, sir?" he queried; "the telephone is disconnected."
He issued instructions, and, with Howat Penny's bag, followed him into
the darkened house.

The windows of a general chamber on the second floor had been thrown
open; and there he found Mariana's brother. Kingsfrere Jannan was a
young man with a broad white face, shadowed in pasty green, and leaden
eyes. His countenance, Howat knew, masked a keen and avaricious
temperament. He did uncommonly well at auction bridge in the clubs.
Kingsfrere, in a grey morning coat with white linen gaiters and a
relentless collar, nodded and lounged from the room; and Mariana soon
appeared. "Perhaps, Howat," she said, "it would be better if you didn't
dress. I have an idea the Polder men don't."

At the stubborn expression which possessed him she exclaimed sharply,
"If you tell me that the Colonel or Gary Dilkes were always formally
dressed at dinner I think I'll scream." Nevertheless, he had no
intention of relinquishing a habit of years for the Polders, or the
north end of the city; and when, later, he came down into the hall,
where the man stood with his silk hat and cape, Mariana put an arm about
his shoulders. "I wish every one could he as beautiful as yourself," she
told him. They passed the Square, bathed in dusk and the beginning
shimmer of arc lights, went through the flattened and faintly thunderous
arch of a railway, and turned into a broad asphalt street, on which
wide, glistening bulk windows gave place to sombre shops with lurid,
flame-streaked vistas, and continuous residences beyond. Howat Penny
gazed curiously at the tall, narrow dwellings, often a continuous,
similar facade from street corner to corner, then diversified in
elaborate, individual design. All, however, had deep stone steps leading
to the sidewalk, thronged with figures in airy white dresses, coatless
men smoking contentedly; there was a constant light vib