ought to leave
them with no regrets."

He laughed. "But they are not loved," he said. "They know it. That's why
they drift on."

She turned on him white and tremulous.

"Haven't you even the excuse of caring for her?"

"Who?"

"A neighbour's wife--who comes drifting into your hospitable haven!"

"I don't pretend to love her, if that is what you mean," he said
pleasantly.

"Then you make her believe it--and that's dastardly!"

"Oh, no. Women don't love unless made love to. You've only read that in
books."

She said a little breathlessly: "You are right. I know men and women
only through books. It's time I learned for myself."

CHAPTER VII

TOGETHER

The end of June and of the house party at Roya-Neh was now near at hand,
and both were to close with a moonlight fete and dance in the forest,
invitations having been sent to distant neighbours who had been
entertaining similar gatherings at Iron Hill and Cloudy Mountain--the
Grays, Beekmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts.

Silks and satins, shoe buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high
tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to
be the inevitable Louis XVI fete--or as near to it as attenuated,
artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever
and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and
sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town in order that those who
sweat and sew in the perfumed ateliers of Fifth Avenue might use them as
models.

"The fun--if there's any in dressing up--ought to lie in making your own
costumes," observed Duane. But nobody displayed any inclination to do
so. And now, on hurry orders, the sewers in the hot Fifth Avenue
ateliers sewed faster. Silken and satin costumes, paste jewelry and
property small-swords were arriving by express; maids flew about the
house at Roya-Neh, trying on, fussing with lace and ribbon, bodice and
flowered pannier, altering, retrimming, adjusting. Their mistresses met
in one another's bedrooms for mysterious confabs over head-dress and
coiffure, lace scarf, and petticoat.

As for the men, they surreptitiously tried on their embroidered coats
and breeches, admired themselves in secrecy, and let it go at that,
returning with embarrassed relief to cards, tennis, and the various
forms of amiable idleness to which they were accustomed. Only Englishmen
can masquerade seriously.

Later, however, the men were compelled to pay so