hall tremblingly expecting some great thing, some
rending scene, and she met him with a cool, "Oh, this is nice. Eva had
some little white cakes made for us." He felt like a man who has asked
for a drink of cold charged water and found it warm and flat.

"How---- Dandy house," he muttered, limply shaking her limp hand.

"Yes, isn't it a darling. They do themselves awfully well here. I'm
afraid your bluff, plain, democratic Westerners are a fraud. I hear a
lot more about 'society' here than I ever did in the East. The sets seem
frightfully complicated." She was drifting into the drawing-room, to a
tapestry stool, and Milt was awkwardly stalking a large wing chair,
while she fidgeted:

"Everybody tells me about how one poor dear soul, a charming lady who
used to take in washing or salt gold-mines or something, and she came
here a little while ago with billions and billions of dollars, and tried
to buy her way in by shopping for all the charities in town, and
apparently she's just as out of it here as she would be in London. You
and I aren't exclusive like that, are we!"

Somehow----

Her "you and I" was too kindly, as though she was trying to put him at
ease, as though she knew he couldn't possibly be at ease. With a
horribly elaborate politeness, with a smile that felt hot on his
twitching cheeks, he murmured, "Oh no. No, we---- No, I guess----"

If he knew what it was he guessed, he couldn't get it out. While he was
trying to find out what had become of all the things there were to say
in the world, a maid came in with an astonishing object--a small, red,
shelved table on wheels, laden with silver vessels, and cake, and
sandwiches that were amazingly small and thin.

The maid was so starched that she creaked. She glanced at Milt----
Claire didn't make him so nervous that he thought of his clothes, but
the maid did. He was certain that she knew that he had blacked his own
shoes, knew how old were his clothes. He was urging himself, "Must get
new suit tomorrow--ready-made--mustn't forget, now--be sure--get suit
tomorrow." He wanted to apologize to the maid for existing.... He
wouldn't dare to fall in love with the maid.... And he'd kill the man
who said he could be fool enough to fall in love with Miss Boltwood.

He sipped his tea, and dropped sandwich crumbs, and ached, and panted,
and peeped at the crushing quantities of pictures and sconces and tables
and chairs in the room, and wondered what they did with all