not see Jane's exit from the house nor her
entrance into the waiting vehicle, but he remained there, his face
pressed against the pane, until the machine set noisily forth upon its
uptown way. Then he went back to stand before his fire, and he opened his
wallet and took out the folded strip of paper and threw it on the coals
without reading it again, for he knew it very well by heart, and he was
still standing there when the sound of Mabel's vigorous gong summoned him
down to dinner.

* * * * *

Rodney Harrison was a trifle annoyed and a trifle amused at Jane's exile,
frankly contemptuous of the achievement of a tale in the _New England
Monthly_ as compared to vaudeville bill-toppers, wholly glad to have
her back. His mother was visiting her people in Boston at the moment, but
as soon as she returned, he was very sure, she would want to make that
long-delayed call on his young writing friend. As a matter of fact, it
was the tale that did it. Mrs. Ormsby Dodd Harrison had not seen her way
to the cultivation of a young woman whose end and aim in life was the
writing of headline acts for the two-a-day, but a gifted young author who
had two charming and thoughtful stories in the brown-gowned magazine that
winter and passed likewise the sober portals of the other three of the
"Big Four," was quite another thing. Before the holidays, in spite of her
telescoping activities at that season, Mrs. Harrison motored down to
Washington Square and called on Miss Vail at Mrs. Hills' boarding house,
and asked her with just the right admixture of formality and cordiality
to dine with them one evening quite simply ... just themselves.

But Miss Vail, it appeared, was not only a very hard-working and
ambitious young author, but very much feted and dated socially, and in
addition, gave generously of her play time to certain worthy settlements
and their concomitant affairs, and two more months elapsed before an
evening could be arranged.

Jane wrote of the dinner to Sarah Farraday.

* * * * *

A shame, isn't it, Sally, that we can't be frank and honest? You
can't think how it would have comforted Rodney's mother in her black
hand-run Spanish lace and the Harrison pearls to have me say, "Be of
good cheer, dear lady! I neither design nor aspire to marry your
son!"

Then she could have removed her invisible armor and l