door and speak to the girl inside.

"What on earth are you doing?" she demanded, laughingly, "--walking
all by your wild lone in the park on a wintry day!"

He explained. She made room for him and he got in.

"We rather hoped you'd be at the opera last night," she said, but
without any reproach in her voice.

"I meant to go, Elorn--but something came up to prevent it," he added,
flushing again. "Were they singing anything new?"

"Yes, but you missed nothing," she reassured him lightly. "Where on
earth have you kept yourself these last weeks? One sees you no more
among the haunts of men."

He said, in the deplorable argot of the hour: "Oh, I'm off all that
social stuff."

"But I'm not social stuff, am I?"

"No. I've meant to call you up. Something always seems to happen--I
don't know, Elorn, but ever since I came back from France I haven't
been up to seeing people."

She glanced at him curiously.

He sat gazing out of the window, where there was nothing to see except
leafless trees and faded grass and starlings and dingy sparrows.

The girl was more worth his attention--one of those New York examples,
built on lean, rangy, thoroughbred lines--long limbed, small of hand
and foot and head, with cinder-blond hair, greyish eyes, a sweet but
too generous mouth, and several noticeable freckles.

Minute grooming and a sure taste gave her that ultra-smart appearance
which does everything for a type that is less attractive in a dinner
gown, and still less in negligee. And which, after marriage, usually
lets a straight strand of hair sprawl across one ear.

But now, coiffeur, milliner, modiste, and her own maiden cleverness
kept her immaculate--the true Gotham model found nowhere else.

They chatted of parties already past, where he had failed to
materialise, and of parties to come, where she hoped he would appear.
And he said he would.

They chatted about their friends and the gossip concerning them.

Traffic on Fifth Avenue was rather worse than usual. The competent
police did their best, but motors and omnibuses, packed solidly, moved
only by short spurts before being checked again.

"It's after one o'clock," she said, glancing at her tiny platinum
wrist-watch. "Here's Delmonico's, Jim. Shall we lunch together?"

He experienced a second's odd hesitation, then: "Certainly," he said.
And she signalled the chauffeur.

The place was beginning to be crowded, but there was a table on the
Fifth Avenue side.