pect that you are not particularly happy?"

"Yes.... It was wrong to have Gray and Cecile here. It was fortunate you
were away. But they saw the Tressilvains."

"What did they think of 'em?" inquired Malcourt.

"What do you suppose they would think?"

"Quite right. Well, don't worry. Hold out a little longer. This is a
ghastly sort of pantomime for you, but there's always a grand
transformation scene at the end. Who knows how soon the curtain will
rise on fairyland and the happy lovers and all that bright and sparkling
business? Children demand it--must have it.... And you are very young
yet."

He laughed, seeing her perplexed expression.

"You don't know what I mean, do you? Listen, Shiela; stay here to
dinner, if you can stand my relatives. We won't play cards. You'll
really find it amusing I think."

"Do you wish me to stay?"

"Yes, I do. I want you to see something."

A few moments afterward she took her umbrella and waterproof and went
away to dress, returning to a dinner-table remarkable for the silence of
the diners. Something, too, had gone wrong with the electric plant, and
after dinner candles were lighted in the living-room. Outside it rained
heavily.

Malcourt sat beside his wife, smoking, and, unaided, sustaining what
conversation there was; and after a while he rose, dragged a heavy,
solid wooden table to the middle of the room, placed five chairs around
it, and smilingly invited Shiela, the Tressilvains, and Portlaw to join
him.

"A seance in table-tipping?" asked his sister coldly. "Really, Louis, I
think we are rather past such things."

"I never saw a bally table tip," observed Tressilvain. "How do you do
it, Louis?"

"I don't; it tips. Come, Shiela, if you don't mind. Come on, Billy."

Tressilvain seated himself and glanced furtively about him.

"I dare say you're all in this game," he said, with a rattling laugh.

"It's no game. If the table tips it tips, and our combined weight can't
hold it down," said Malcourt. "If it won't tip it won't, and I'll bet
you a hundred dollars that you can't tip it, Herby."

Tressilvain, pressing his hands hard on the polished edge, tried to move
the table; then he stood up and tried. It was too heavy and solid, and
he could do nothing except by actually lifting it or by seizing it in
both hands and dragging it about.

One by one, reluctantly, the others took seats around the table and, as
instructed by Malcourt, rested the points of their finger