really
there. But, of course, he could not do that. He would have been almost
inclined to believe they were wax figures if they had not moved, but
they had moved.

They had been--sprawling is not a word to use in connection with
dryads--yet certainly reclining, in easy chairs and on sofas, and had
started up as the door opened to stare at him. One had laughed. Peter
had shut the door on her laugh. He had brought away a vague impression
that chairs, sofas, and carpet were pale gray, and that the dryads'
dresses of wonderful tints, sparkling with gold and silver and jewels,
had been brilliant as tropical flowers against the neutral background.
Also, when he came to think of it, he wasn't sure that the walls were
not mostly made of mirrors. That was why he could not be certain
whether he had seen five dryads or five times five.

"The dryad door," he apostrophized it romantically, keeping his
balance by standing with his feet apart, as old men stand before a
fire. It was a very ordinary-looking door, and that made the romance
for Peter in giving it such a name--just a white-painted door, so new
that it smelled slightly of varnish--yet behind it lay dreamland.

Of course Peter Rolls knew that the tall, incredibly lovely beings
were not dryads and not dreams, although they wore low necks, and
pearls and diamonds in their wonderful, waved hair, at eleven o'clock
of a stormy morning on board an Atlantic liner. Still, he was blessed
if he could think what they were, and what they were doing in that
room of mirrors without any furniture which he could recall, except a
very large screen, a few chairs, and a sofa or two.

The next best thing to the forbidden one--opening the door again to
ask the beings point-blank whether they were pipe dreams or just
mermaids--was to go on to the gymnasium and inquire there. Toward this
end young Mr. Rolls (as he was respectfully called in a business house
never mentioned by his sister) immediately took steps. But taking
steps was as far as he got. Suddenly it seemed a deed you could not
do, to demand of an imitation-camel's attendant why five young ladies
wore evening dress in the morning in a room three doors away.

After all, why should a camel attendant dare to know anything about
them? Perhaps they were merely amusing themselves and each other by
trying on all their gladdest clothes. There might be girls who would
think this a good way to kill time in a storm. Yes, conceivably there
m