king quickly and
with a tremendous, if concealed, agitation. "Why," she laughed back,
finally, "that _would_ be pleasant. But I came to take dictation, Mr.
Flint. And women ... women, you know, are so funny! If they make up
their minds to one thing, they can't switch suddenly to another idea."

He was paying no attention to her remark, a remark which she felt would
have fallen flat in any event, since it was so palpably studied.

"The living-room is in there," he said, pointing. "Make yourself at
home."

She went in and sat before the fire. Flint disappeared. She tried hard
to analyze the situation. It was unthinkable that Mr. Flint had
deliberately planned this piece of foolishness. He must have had some
idea of work when he had telephoned her; perhaps he still had. It was
his way of being facetious, she argued, this fine pretense that it was
all to be a pleasant lark, or it may have been his idea of hospitality.
Of course he had been drinking, but she took comfort in the thought that
there must be instinctive standards in a man like Flint that even whisky
could not swamp. At least he must respect his wife--surely it was not
possible for Flint, drunk or sober, to offer such an affront to _her_,
however little he respected the women in his employ. She dismissed Mrs.
Richards's exaggerated insinuations with their well-deserved contempt,
but she could not thrust aside quite so readily the eye-lifting tone
with which Stillman had met the announcement of Mrs. Flint's absence
from home.

This was the first time that Claire had seen Stillman since the
musicale. She had thought a great deal about him and particularly about
his problem. She felt a great desire to know everything--all the details
of the unfortunate circumstance that had driven his wife into a
madhouse, and yet whenever her mother broached the subject Claire
changed the topic with curious panic. She seemed to dread the hard,
almost triumphant manner that her mother assumed in tracking misfortune
to its lair and gloating over it. She began to wonder whether Stillman
would be swinging back to the city on a late boat ... or would the storm
keep him at Edington's sister's home all night?

She was in the midst of this speculation when Flint came into the room.

"We'll eat early and have that off our minds," he announced. His manner
was brusk and business-like again. Claire felt reassured.

But she was disturbed to find a cocktail at her place at the table.

"