t was
so good to be awake, to be vital, to be tingling with the current of
electricity like a telegraph wire. She flung back the curtains, raised
all the windows, opened her arms to the air, spilled her cloak on the
floor, sat at the piano and ragged "The Spring Song."

"I am a kid," she said, speaking above the sound, and going on with her
argument to Alice. "I am and I will be, I will be. And I'll play the
fool and revel in it as long as I can--so there!"

Palgrave had picked up the cloak and was holding it unconsciously
against his immaculate shirt. It was the sentimental act of a virtuoso
in the art of pleasing women--who are so easily pleased. At the moment
he had achieved forgetfulness of boudoir trickery and so retained
almost all his usual assumption of dignity. Even Joan, with her quick
eye for the ridiculous, failed to detect the bathos of his attitude,
and merely thought that he was trying to be funny and not succeeding.

It so happened that over Palgrave's shoulder she could see the bold
crayon drawing of Martin, brown and healthy and muscular, without an
ounce of affectation, an unmistakable man with his nice irregular
features and clean, merry eyes. There was strength and capability
stamped all over him, and there was, as well, a pleasing sense of
reliability which gained immediate confidence. With the sort of shock
one gets on going into the fresh air from a steam-heated room, she
realized the contrast between these two.

There is always something as unreal about handsome men as there is
about Japanese gardens. Palgrave's hair was so scrupulously sleek and
wiglike, his features so well-balanced and well-chosen, his wide-set
eyes so large and long-lashed, and his fair, soft mustache so
miraculously precise. His clothes, too, were a degree more than
perfect. They were so right as to be a little freakish because they
attracted as much attention as if they were badly cut. He was born for
tea fights and winter resorts, to listen with a distrait half-smile to
the gushing adulation of the oh-my-dear type of women.

He attracted Joan. She admired his assurance and polish and manners.
With these three things even a man with a broken nose and a head bald
as an egg can carry a beautiful woman to the altar. He was something
new to her, too, and she found much to amuse her in his way of
expressing himself. He observed, and sometimes crystallized his
observations with a certain neatness. Also, and she made no bone