t with her own class as represented by this gathering.

All day long a high north wind had been blowing, one of those shrill
winds from the snow-capped Sierras that bring drought to California and
rasp the nerves like a steel whip. The wind had not gone down at sunset,
as it often did, and even while they dined with a roaring wood fire in
the great chimney-place, the noise of the wind could be heard as it
streamed through the canon, lashing the tall trees above the house.
Adelle, listening to the uproar outside, wondered whether the tar-paper
shack on the hillside, which must be directly in the path of the gale,
had been able to withstand it. She thought of the mason sitting in his
flimsy beaten room listening to the mouthings of the tempest, alone. He
was not complaining, she felt. The tempest and the strife of life merely
roused the ironic demon within him--to laugh sardonically, to laugh but
fight on....

"As I was saying," the major iterated to fix her wandering mind, and she
stared at him. What difference did it make what he was saying! The
polite major shifted his conversation from politics to art, with the
urbanity of the good diner-out. Had she seen the work of the "futurists"
when she was last in Paris. Really it was beyond belief! Another sign of
the general degeneracy of the age--revolt from discipline, etc. But
Adelle had nothing for the "futurists"; and finally Major Pound gave her
up and turned to the lady on his right. Archie, whose restless eyes had
seen the situation opposite him, cast his wife some sour looks. He
himself was more boisterous than usual, as if to cover up the dumbness
of his wife. They were dining to-night the younger "polo" set for the
most part, and the men and women of this set liked to make a great deal
of noise, laughed boisterously at nothing, shouted at each other, sang
at the table, and often drank more than was good for them. Archie
ordered in the victrola, and between courses the couples "trotted," then
a new amusement that had just reached the Coast.

When at last the company divided for coffee and smoking, Archie
whispered to his wife snarlingly,--

"Can't you open your mouth?"

Adelle was insensible to his little dig, as she called it, and silently,
mechanically went through with her petty task of hostess in the hall
where the women sat, as the drawing-room was still in the hands of the
decorators. All the fictitious gayety of the party died out as soon as
the sexes sep