ker?"

Parker Lloyd, with his wife on his arm, felt discretion his part.

"Well," he said innocently selecting the one argument most distasteful
to the ladies, "it was a man's dinner, Will. It was just what a man
likes, served the way he likes it. But if the girls like flummery and
fuss, I don't see why they shouldn't have it."

"Really!" said Mrs. White with a laugh that showed a trace of something
not hilarious, "really, you are all too absurd! We are a long way from
the authorities here, but I think we will find out pretty soon that
simple dinners have become the fad in Washington, or Paris, and that
your marvelous Mrs. Burgoyne is simply following the fashion like all
the rest of us."

CHAPTER X

Barry had murmured something about "rush of work at the office" when he
came in a few minutes late for Mrs. Burgoyne's dinner, but as the
evening wore on, he seemed in no hurry to depart. Sidney was delighted
to see him really in his element with the Von Praags, father and son,
the awakened expression that was so becoming to him on his face, and
his curiously complex arguments stirring the old man over and over
again to laughter. She had been vexed at herself for feeling a little
shyness when he first came in; the unfamiliar evening dress and the
gravity of his handsome face had made him seem almost a stranger, but
this wore off, and after the other guests had gone these four still sat
laughing and talking like the best of old friends together.

When the Von Praags had gone upstairs, she walked with him to the
porch, and they stood at the top of the steps for a moment, the rich
scent of the climbing LaMarque and Banksia roses heavy about them, and
the dark starry arch of the sky above. Sidney, a little tired, but
pleased with her dinner and her guests, and ready for a breath of the
sweet summer night before going upstairs, was confused by having her
heart suddenly begin to thump again. She looked at Barry, his figure
lost in the shadow, only his face dimly visible in the starlight, and
some feeling, new, young, terrifying, and yet infinitely delicious,
rushed over her. She might have been a girl of seventeen instead of a
sober woman fifteen years older, with wifehood, and motherhood, and
widowhood all behind her.

"A wonderful night!" said Barry, looking down at the dark mass of
tree-tops that almost hid the town, and at the rising circle of shadows
that was the hills.

"And a good place to be, Santa Paloma,