dale has been scared by the talk lately," Mrs. Fisher
rejoined; "but the sight of her last night sent him off his head. What do
you think he said to me after her TABLEAU? 'My God, Mrs. Fisher, if I
could get Paul Morpeth to paint her like that, the picture'd appreciate a
hundred per cent in ten years.'"

"By Jove,--but isn't she about somewhere?" exclaimed Van Alstyne,
restoring his glass with an uneasy glance.

"No; she ran off while you were all mixing the punch down stairs. Where
was she going, by the way? What's on tonight? I hadn't heard of anything."

"Oh, not a party, I think," said an inexperienced young Farish who had
arrived late. "I put her in her cab as I was coming in, and she gave the
driver the Trenors' address."

"The Trenors'?" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Stepney. "Why, the house is
closed--Judy telephoned me from Bellomont this evening."

"Did she? That's queer. I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Well, come now,
Trenor's there, anyhow--I--oh, well--the fact is, I've no head for
numbers," he broke off, admonished by the nudge of an adjoining foot, and
the smile that circled the room.

In its unpleasant light Selden had risen and was shaking hands with his
hostess. The air of the place stifled him, and he wondered why he had
stayed in it so long.

On the doorstep he stood still, remembering a phrase of Lily's: "It seems
to me you spend a good deal of time in the element you disapprove of."

Well--what had brought him there but the quest of her? It was her
element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That
BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's
task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are
numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with
dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had
strength for both--it was her weakness which had put the strength in him.
It was not, alas, a clean rush of waves they had to win through, but a
clogging morass of old associations and habits, and for the moment its
vapours were in his throat. But he would see clearer, breathe freer in
her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar
which should float them to safety. He smiled at the whirl of metaphor
with which he was trying to build up a defence against the influences of
the last hour. It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on
which social judgments depend, should s