ideous stories
and the outrage to his wife's feelings.

At first Landry bought books; then rugs, drawings, china. He had a
beautiful collection of old French and Spanish fans. He kept them in an
escritoire he had brought from Spain, but there were always a few of
them lying about in his sitting-room.

While Landry and his guest were waiting for the tea to be brought,
Ottenburg took up one of these fans from the low marble mantel-shelf and
opened it in the firelight. One side was painted with a pearly sky and
floating clouds. On the other was a formal garden where an elegant
shepherdess with a mask and crook was fleeing on high heels from a
satin-coated shepherd.

"You ought not to keep these things about, like this, Oliver. The dust
from your grate must get at them."

"It does, but I get them to enjoy them, not to have them. They're
pleasant to glance at and to play with at odd times like this, when one
is waiting for tea or something."

Fred smiled. The idea of Landry stretched out before his fire playing
with his fans, amused him. Mrs. McGinnis brought the tea and put it
before the hearth: old teacups that were velvety to the touch and a
pot-bellied silver cream pitcher of an Early Georgian pattern, which was
always brought, though Landry took rum.

Fred drank his tea walking about, examining Landry's sumptuous
writing-table in the alcove and the Boucher drawing in red chalk over
the mantel. "I don't see how you can stand this place without a heroine.
It would give me a raging thirst for gallantries."

Landry was helping himself to a second cup of tea. "Works quite the
other way with me. It consoles me for the lack of her. It's just
feminine enough to be pleasant to return to. Not any more tea? Then sit
down and play for me. I'm always playing for other people, and I never
have a chance to sit here quietly and listen."

Ottenburg opened the piano and began softly to boom forth the shadowy
introduction to the opera they had just heard. "Will that do?" he asked
jokingly. "I can't seem to get it out of my head."

"Oh, excellently! Thea told me it was quite wonderful, the way you can
do Wagner scores on the piano. So few people can give one any idea of
the music. Go ahead, as long as you like. I can smoke, too." Landry
flattened himself out on his cushions and abandoned himself to ease with
the circumstance of one who has never grown quite accustomed to ease.

Ottenburg played on, as he happened to remember. H