dvanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly
balanced on his gilded hilt.

"So you did get my note, Duane?" she said, laying her pretty hand on his
arm.

"I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?"

"I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?"

He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated.

The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks
and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and
very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring
and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and
everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against
the foliage.

The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from
him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were
crossed and recrossed.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Life. It's all so very wrong."

"Oh," he said, smiling, "so it's life that is amiss, not we!"

"I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane"--she turned and looked
at him--"I haven't had much of a chance yet--to go very right or very
wrong."

"You've had chances enough for the latter," he said with an unpleasant
laugh. "In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance."

"There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it."

"Yes, and I mean to take her out," said Duane grimly. "Do you think I
want Naida to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?"

"Where can you take her?"

"Where I'm going in future myself--among people whose brains are not as
obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and
old-fashioned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror
of the Decalogue!"

"Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?" she asked curiously.

"Even we are, but some of us are more afraid of ennui. Fire and fear are
the greatest purifiers in the world; it's fear of some sort or other,
and only fear, that keeps the world as decent as it is."

"I'm not afraid," she said, playing with her fan. "I'm only afraid of
dying before I have lived at all."

"What do you call living?"

"Being loved," she said, and looked up at him.

"You poor little thing!" he said, only partly in earnest.

"Yes, I'm sorry for the girl I was.... I was rather a nice girl, Duane.
You remember me before I married."

"Yes, I do. You were a corker. You are still."

She nodded: "Yes, outwardly. Within is--no