ing authors
whose struggles were in the right direction, and which had guaranteed
to make him famous before he was thirty. Feeling the security of his
position he stoutly defended those passages which jarred upon the
sensitive nerves of the young editor of _Woman_. Maidenwood, in the
smoothest of voices, urged the necessity of the author's recognizing
certain restrictions at the outset, and Miss Broadwood, who joined the
argument quite without invitation or encouragement, seconded him with
pointed and malicious remarks which caused the young editor manifest
discomfort. Restzhoff, the chemist, demanded the attention of the entire
company for his exposition of his devices for manufacturing ice cream
from vegetable oils and for administering drugs in bonbons.

Flavia, always noticeably restless at dinner, was somewhat apathetic
toward the advocate of peptonized chocolate and was plainly concerned
about the sudden departure of M. Roux, who had announced that it would
be necessary for him to leave tomorrow. M. Emile Roux, who sat at
Flavia's right, was a man in middle life and quite bald, clearly without
personal vanity, though his publishers preferred to circulate only those
of his portraits taken in his ambrosial youth. Imogen was considerably
shocked at his unlikeness to the slender, black-stocked Rolla he had
looked at twenty. He had declined into the florid, settled heaviness of
indifference and approaching age. There was, however, a certain look of
durability and solidity about him; the look of a man who has earned the
right to be fat and bald, and even silent at dinner if he chooses.

Throughout the discussion between Wellington and Will Maidenwood, though
they invited his participation, he remained silent, betraying no sign
either of interest or contempt. Since his arrival he had directed most
of his conversation to Hamilton, who had never read one of his twelve
great novels. This perplexed and troubled Flavia. On the night of his
arrival Jules Martel had enthusiastically declared, "There are schools
and schools, manners and manners; but Roux is Roux, and Paris sets
its watches by his clock." Flavia bad already repeated this remark to
Imogen. It haunted her, and each time she quoted it she was impressed
anew.

Flavia shifted the conversation uneasily, evidently exasperated and
excited by her repeated failures to draw the novelist out. "Monsieur
Roux," she began abruptly, with her most animated smile, "I remember so