aking him supreme.
It was true that he had not as yet asked her to marry him--had not even
made love to her, unless admiration is love-making--but to Lydia that
was a secondary consideration. The first thing was to make up her own
mind.

She had two great problems to face. At first he did not want to go out
at all--did not want to enter her field. He appeared to think, as so
many Americans do, that there was something trivial, almost immoral, in
meeting your fellow creatures except in professional relations. The
second problem was worse, that having overcome his reluctance, he began
to like it too much, to take it too seriously. He had never had time for
it before, he said, but actually he must have felt excluded from it,
either at college, or as a young man in the legislature of his state.

The first time he went to the opera with her--he was genuinely fond of
music--she noticed this. Lydia's box was next to Mrs. Little's. The
newspapers made her name impressive, but her slim white-haired presence
made her more so. Lydia herself admired her, and if ever she thought of
her own old age she thought she would like to be like Mrs. Little--a
wish very unlikely of realization, for Mrs. Little had been molded by
traditional obligations and sacrifices to duties which Lydia had never
acknowledged.

As they were waiting in the crowded lobby of the Thirty-ninth Street
entrance--all the faces above velvets and furs peering out and all the
footmen's faces peering in and everyone chattering and shouting and so
little apparently accomplished in the way of clearing the crowd--Albee
said: "Mrs. Little has asked me to dine on the sixteenth."

Lydia caught something complaisant in the tone. The idea that he could
be flattered by such an invitation was distasteful to her.

"Did you accept?" she asked in a cold tone that she tried to make
noncommittal.

Fortunately politics had taught Albee caution. He had not accepted. He
had said that he would let the great lady know in the morning.

"Do you think that sort of thing will amuse you?"

He answered that it would amuse him if she were going, and against her
better judgment she allowed herself to believe that the eagerness in his
voice had been occasioned by the promised opportunity of seeing her.

The fancy ball was more serious. The Pulsifers were giving it in their
great ballroom just before Lent. Lydia and Miss Bennett were discussing
costumes one afternoon at tea time when Albee