er that showed them vaguely alike, as much alike at any rate as an
elk and a roedeer.

Doris Haden was much less fair than Lily, though she could only have
been called dark in comparison with her sister. She had a high
complexion, wide almond-shaped eyes of a very mutable hazel, and a ripe,
sanguine mouth. She was dressed in a coat and skirt of crushed-strawberry
frieze, whose cool folds seemed to enhance her slightly exotic air.
Michael could not help doubting whether she and Alan were perfectly
suited to one another. He could not imagine that she would not care for
him, but he wondered about Alan's feelings; and Drake's overnight
description stuck unpleasantly in his mind with a sensation of
disloyalty to Lily whose sister after all Doris was.

They were not left very long without visitors, for one by one young men
came in with a self-possession and an assumption of familiarity that
Michael resented very much, and all the more deeply because he felt
himself at a disadvantage. He wondered if Lily were despising him, and
wished that she would not catch hold of these detestable young men by
the lapels of their coats, or submit to their throaty persiflage. Once
when the most absolutely self-possessed of all, a tall thin creature
with black fuzzy hair and stilted joints, pulled Lily on to his knee to
talk to him, Michael nearly dived through the window in a fury of
resentment.

All these young men seemed to him to revel in their bad taste, and their
conversation, half-theatrical, half-artistic, was of a character that he
could not enter into. Mrs. Haden's loud laugh rang out over the clatter
of tea-cups; Doris walked about the room smoking a cigarette and humming
songs; Lily moved from group to group with a nonchalance that seriously
perturbed Michael, who retired more and more deeply behind a spreading
palm in the darkest corner of the room. Yet he could not tear himself
away from the fascination of watching Lily's grace; he could not
surrender her to these marionettes of vulgar fashion; he could not go
coldly out into the Sabbath night without the consolation of first
hustling these intruders before him.

The afternoon drew on to real dusk; the gas was lighted; songs were sung
and music was played. All these young men seemed accomplished performers
of insignificant arts. Mrs. Haden recited, and in this drawing-room her
heightened air and accentuated voice made Michael blush. Doris went
upstairs for a moment and prese