he moment. She picked up her three books
from the table near by, held them with her left arm so that her right
hand might be free to clasp Antonia's, and, smiling as a basket of
chips--thus did she later describe herself--advanced toward the crowning
honor of the day.

Antonia saw her coming and narrowed her eyes the better to see.
Antonia's face, at no time in her life soft, was as much like granite at
this moment as it had the moment before been like old white soap; her
eyes, fixed on the approaching pair, turned stonily unseeing.

Gerald bravely went through with the introduction, and tried to warm the
atmosphere with winged words. Aurora's hand was all ready to shake.

Antonia's hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and
overflowing, was not put off by this.

"I can never tell you"--she gushed, "how pleased I am to meet you--how
honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly wonderful I think
your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf ... See what
I've brought. These three that I'm going to leave for you to write in,
if you'll be so very kind. It would increase their value for me I never
can tell you how much."

"My dear Madam," said Antonia, "I never inscribe a book that I have not
myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which it is
done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter
for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop
them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps."

"Oh!"

"Yes."

"Oh!" more faintly.

"Yes!" more firmly.

Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed Princess
Rostopchine. "Vera Sergeievna, you were saying...."

The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the
books she held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them
up, "Did I ever tell you"--she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved
on,--"about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go
by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a
favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room,
in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a
policeman.

* * * * *

When they were in her coupe, smartly bowling toward town, silence fell.
Gerald's brow was black, his eyes were steely.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he jerked out, "I am not going to express myself on
the ex