ed to him. Had she any motive for desiring his
absence? Had some unexpected possibility cropped up? Did she want to get
rid of him? Not, he added, that he minded if she did, but it would be
rather interesting to know.

"I'm going a little earlier than I expected," he went on, "because the
Lanes are going, and I hate to make that long journey alone."

She nodded understandingly. "It will be much nicer for you to have them."

He looked at her coldly. It seemed to him he had never known a more
callous nature. And to think that the evening before she had actually
shed tears, simply because he took another girl to lunch! It caught his
attention, he said to himself, just as a study in human nature.

He did not see her the next day until evening. They were both to dine at
Nancy's--(thus had the proposed dinner with Mrs. Almar deteriorated) and
go afterward to the opera. Nancy of course would not have dreamed of
crowding three women into her box, so the party consisted of herself and
Christine, Riatt, Roland Almar--a pale, eager, little man, trying to
placate the world with smiles, and once again Linburne, whose handsome
dark head, and curved mouth, half cynical, half sensuous, began to weary
Riatt inexpressibly.

After dinner he found that he and Mrs. Almar were to go in her tiny
coupe, and the four others in Linburne's large car.

"And so," she observed as soon as they started, "the mouse preferred
the trap after all?" And he could feel that she was laughing at him in
the shadow.

"But feels none the less grateful for the kind intention to rescue him."

"Oh, I don't care much for the gratitude of a man in love with
another woman."

"You judge me to be very much in love?"

This general conviction on the part of the ladies of his acquaintance was
growing monotonous. Nancy continued:

"But come back in two years, and we'll talk of gratitude then. In the
meantime let us stick to the impersonal. What do you think of Linburne?"

"I've had many opportunities of judging. I've been nowhere for two days
without meeting him."

Mrs. Almar laughed with meaning.

"I wonder why that should be," she said.

"What do you mean?" Riatt asked, but at that moment they drew up before
the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, and the doorman, opening the motor's
door, shouted "Ten--Forty-five"--a cheerful lie he has been telling four
times a week for many years.

In the opera box, Riatt at once seated himself behind Christine. There is
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