hands rested with fingers loosely interlocked in her lap,
holding a drooping rose. The splendid slenderness of her figure was
enhanced by the veiling of delicate negligee, and the face under its
night-dark profusion of hair looked out wistfully with a sad half-smile
on something that her heart chose to hold before her gaze. Certainly,
had it not been that such excellence of the photographer's craft could
only have been attained by careful posing, one might have said that he
had taken an unfair advantage and had permitted his lens to spy upon a
lovely lady in the secrecy of her boudoir, whose sole companions were
emotions which must remain locked in her beautiful breast.

She had told Paul when she gave him the picture, and the same ghost of
pathos had flickered into her eyes and the droop of her lips, that the
flower was one from a box of his giving, and that she had been thinking
of him when the camera clicked, forgetting for a moment the pose she had
meant to assume. Often, she whispered, she sat like that thinking of
him.

So Paul kept flowers on each side of the frame, and made of it a sort of
shrine.

And yet, sometimes, when he had said good-bye to her after a luncheon or
tea together, he would turn his car southward and find himself driving
down the avenue to Washington square and the old house on the south
side, to invite Marcia Terroll for a spin beside him. And sometimes he
would call her on the telephone and they would meet for a walk.

To himself alone, he confessed his love for Loraine, for a specter of
timidity rose often and marred their meetings. How was it to end? He
could no more escape the realization of the husband's existence and
possible ire than can the quail in the open grain-field forget the
shadow of a soaring hawk. And Paul was not the most daring cock quail in
the stubble. He saw shadows of proprietary wings where the sky held only
wisps of fleecy cloud.

With Marcia, there was the security of safe companionship, and a
combination of stimulus and soothing.

That this interest was tinctured with an essence of the enthusiastic,
which to other eyes than his own--even to her eyes--might seem to hold a
stronger personal note, he did not admit to himself. That would have
meant another complication and a fresh alarm, so if the idea came he
laughed it away as preposterous. But in a fashion those were very good
days. He was discovering New York.

There are quaint places about the square, where