l never forgive myself. So I'm damned either way."

But ten minutes later, with a man on either side of her, she was sitting
at the piano with a cigaret tucked behind her ear, looking distractingly
pretty and very gay and singing a slightly indecorous but very witty
little French song.

Clayton Spencer, cutting in on the second rubber, wondered which of the
many he knew was the real Audrey. He wondered if Chris had not married,
for instance, the girl at the piano, only to find she was the woman
upstairs. And he wondered, too, if that were true, why he should have
had to clear out. So many men married the sort Audrey had been, in
Chris's little study, only to find that after all the thing they had
thought they were getting was a pose, and it was the girl at the piano
after all.

He missed her, somewhat later. She was gone a full half hour, and he
fancied her absence had something to do with the money she had borrowed.

CHAPTER VII

Two things helped greatly to restore Clayton to a more normal state of
mind during the next few days. One of them undoubtedly was the Valentine
situation. Beside Audrey's predicament and Chris's wretched endeavor to
get away and yet prove himself a man, his own position seemed, if not
comfortable, at least tenable. He would have described it, had he been
a man to put such a thing into words, as that "he and Natalie didn't
exactly hit it off."

There were times, too, during those next few days, when he wondered
if he had not exaggerated their incompatibility. Natalie was unusually
pleasant. She spent some evening hours on the arm of his big chair,
talking endlessly about the Linndale house, and he would lean back,
smiling, and pretend to a mad interest in black and white tiles and
loggias.

He made no further protest as to the expense.

"Tell me," he said once, "what does a fellow wear in this--er--Italian
palace? If you have any intention of draping me in a toga and putting
vine leaves in my hair, or whatever those wreaths were made of--!"

Natalie had no sense of humor, however. She saw that he meant to be
amusing, and she gave the little fleeting smile one gives to a child who
is being rather silly.

"Of course," he went on, "we'll have Roman baths, and be anointed with
oil afterwards by lady Greek slaves. Perfumed oil."

"Don't be vulgar, Clay." And he saw she was really offended.

While there was actually no change in their relationship, which remained
as it had been f