lk to
you--that's all. Is that good enough?"

"Quite good enough!"

He scanned an open programme with perplexed interest, as though it were
an Egyptian hieroglyph.

"How long do each of these things last?" he asked, with evident
amusement.

"About twelve minutes, with the pause."

"What's the good of twelve minutes? Can't I have them in batches,
three at a time. Or would that be going quite out of bounds?"

Honor laughed. . . . "I'm afraid so! Though it would be far nicer.
But I will give you one 'batch,' and two isolated ones; and that's a
generous allowance, I assure you."

"Thanks.--I suppose Desmond takes you in to supper?"

"Yes. It's a standing engagement! Why don't you ask Miss Maurice?"
There was a moment of silence.

"We are not intimate enough for that," he answered, with a bad
imitation of unconcern; and Honor wondered, as she had done before now,
wherein lay the key to a curiosity-provoking situation. But just then
Desmond joined them; and no more was said.

The moment they entered the ballroom Lenox was aware of his wife,--the
focal point in a circle of men, distributing her favours with a smiling
impartiality that was, in itself, a delicate form of coquetry, while
Garth stood sentinel beside her, with an unmistakable suggestion of 'No
Thoroughfare,' which he could assume to a nicety; and which Lenox noted
with a curse at the restrictions imposed upon civilised man.

But a second glance at Quita crowded all else out of his mind. It was
his first sight of her in full evening dress, and he stood spellbound
by the radiant quality of her charm: a charm that triumphed over minor
imperfections of feature and form; a mental and spiritual vitality that
had deepened rather than diminished with the years. Her dress, like
everything about her, was an instinctive expression of herself: though
Lenox, while appreciating its harmony, could not have defined it in set
terms. He knew that it was of velvet; that it sheathed her rounded
slenderness as a rind sheathes its fruit; that the light and shade on
its surface, as she moved, reminded him of willows in a wind; that,
from shoulder to hem, the eye was nowhere checked, the simplicity of
outline nowhere marred by objectless incidents of adornment. He noted
also that its indefinite colour was repeated in a row of aquamarines,
that glistened like drops of sea-water at her throat.

A light touch on his arm recalled him to outward things.

"Captain L