that they had taken
away by force from somebody else.

It was indeed a very entertaining lecture, a most stimulating,
interesting experience to the crowd of well-dressed women; although
perhaps some of them found it a little long after the dining-room across
the hall began to be filled with waiters preparing the refreshments and
an appetizing smell of freshly-made coffee filled the air. Still, it was
a lecture they had paid for, and it was gratifying to have it so full
and conscientiously elaborated.

The ideas promulgated were not startlingly new to them, since they had
read magazine articles on "Why American Women Marry Foreigners" and
similar analyses of the society in which they lived; but to have it said
to one's face, by a living man, a tall, ugly, distinguished foreigner,
with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole,--that brought
it home to one! They nodded their beautifully-hatted heads at the truth
of his well-chosen, significant anecdotes, they laughed at his sallies,
they applauded heartily at the end when the lecturer sat down, the
little smile, that Lydia found so teasing, still on his bearded lips.

"Well, he hit things off pretty close, for a foreigner, didn't he?"
commented Madeleine cheerfully, gathering her white furs up to the
whiter skin of her long, fair throat and preparing for a rush on the
refreshment room. "He must have kept his eyes open pretty wide since he
landed."

Lydia did not answer, nor did she join in the stampede to the
dining-room. She sat still, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
eyes very bright and dark in her pale face. She was left quite alone in
the deserted room. Across the hall was the loud, incessant uproar of
feminine conversation released from the imprisonment of an hour's
silence. From the scraps of talk that were intelligible, it might have
been one of her own receptions. Lydia heard not a mention of the
opinions to which they had been listening. Apparently, they were
regarded as an entertaining episode in a social afternoon. She listened
intently. She looked across at the crowd of her acquaintances as though
she were seeing them for the first time. In their midst was the tall
foreigner, smiling, talking, bowing, drinking tea. He was being
introduced in succession to all of his admiring auditors.

Lydia rose to go and made her way to the dressing-room on the second
floor for her wraps. As she returned toward the head of the stairs she
saw a man'