He felt that he had a right to hold her to account for the
outcome of events. If she were well enough to have rosy cheeks and to
laugh at nothing, she was well enough to have satisfactory results
expected from her efforts.

"I hope very much that everything will go well," he said curtly, turning
away. "Our first dinner party means a good deal."

But everything did not go well. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to say
that nothing went well. From the over-peppered soup (Lydia had forgotten
to caution her rattle-brained assistant that she had already seasoned
the bouillon) to the salad which, although excellent, gave out frankly,
beyond any possibility of disguise, while five people were still
unserved, the meal was a long procession of mishaps. Paul took up
sorrily his wife's rather hysterical note of self-mockery, and laughed
and joked over the varied eccentricities of the pretentious menu. But
there was no laughter in his heart.

Never before, in all his life, from babyhood up, had he been forced to
know the acrid taste of failure, and the dose was not sweetened by his
intense consciousness that he was not in any way responsible. No such
fiasco had ever resulted from anything he _had_ been responsible for, he
thought fiercely to himself, leaning forward smilingly to talk to the
president of the street-railway company, who, having nothing in the
shape of silverware left before his place but a knife and spoon, was
eating his salad with the latter implement. "Lydia has no right to act
so," he thought.

The hostess gave the effect of flushed, bright-eyed animation usual with
her on exciting occasions.

"Your wife is a beauty," said the street-railway magnate, looking down
the disorganized table toward her.

Paul received this assurance with the proper enthusiastic assent, but
something else gleamed hotly in his face as he looked at her. "I have
_some_ rights," thought the young husband. "Lydia owes me something!" He
never before had been moved to pity for himself.

Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream. The exhausting
efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort of coma of fatigue through
which she felt but dully the successive stabs of the ill-served,
unsuccessful dinner. At times, the table, the guests, the room itself,
wavered before her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance.
She did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and eating
nothing. She was only conscious of an inte