planet. The light here was as yellow
as gold, and came from a great many candles which, in sconces and
candelabra, stood about the room, their oblong yellow flame as steady
in the breathless quiet of the air as though they burned in a vault
underground. There was not a book in the room, except one in a yellow
cover lying beside a box of candy on the mantelpiece, but every ledge,
table, projection, or shelf was covered with small, queerly fashioned,
dully gleaming objects of ivory, or silver, or brass, or carved wood,
or porcelain.

The mistress of the room now came in. She was in a loose garment of
smoke-brown chiffon, held in place occasionally about her luxuriously
rounded figure by a heavy cord of brown silk. She advanced to Sylvia
with both hands outstretched, and took the girl's slim, rather hard
young fingers in the softest of melting palms. "Aren't you a _dear_,
to be so exactly on time!" she exclaimed.

Sylvia was a little surprised. She had thought it axiomatic that
people kept their appointments promptly. "Oh, I'm always on time," she
answered simply.

Mrs. Draper laughed and pulled her down on the sofa. "You clear-eyed
young Diana, you won't allow me even an instant's illusion that you
were eager to come to see _me_!"

"Oh yes, I _was_!" said Sylvia hastily, fearing that she might have
said something rude.

Mrs. Draper laughed again and gave the hand she still held a squeeze.
"You're adorable, that's what _you_ are!" She exploded this pointblank
charge in Sylvia's face with nonchalant ease, and went on with
another. "Jerry Fiske is quite right about you. I suppose you know
that you're here today so that Jerry can meet you."

As there was obviously not the faintest possibility of Sylvia's having
heard this save through her present informant, she could only
look what she felt, very much at a loss, and rather blank, with a
heightened color. Mrs. Draper eyed her with an intentness at variance
with the lightness of her tone, as she continued: "I do think Jerry'd
have burned up in one flare, like a torch, if he couldn't have seen
you at once! After you'd fenced and disappeared again into that stupid
crowd of graceless girls, he kept track of you every minute with his
opera-glasses, and kept saying: 'She's a goddess! Good Lord! how she
carries herself!' It was rather hard on poor Eleanor right there
beside him, but I don't blame him. Eleanor's a sweet thing, but she'd
be sugar and water compared to champagne