d garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it
was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner
he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the
gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet,
of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned
snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never
succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest
gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided.

He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance
that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double
existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of
course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a
pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating
charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly
dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye.

"I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think," he said, a little awkwardly.
"I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks
at it?"

"Mary?" said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. "Yes, I suppose so. Why?"

The naive egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.

"Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her," he said. "I am
glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?"

"What on earth do you mean?" asked his hostess, in unassumed
stupefaction.

"I mean, do you think she would marry me?" Varian brought out plumply.
"Is there--was there ever anybody else?"

For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to
the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.

"I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you," she answered
him, clear-eyed; "and there was never," her tone was too sweet, he
thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, "there was never
anybody else!"

Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall
of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was
ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and t