nder when she spoke.

"We'll telephone your maid in the morning. You must go to bed,
Palla."

"Alone?"

Ilse turned carelessly and laid her cloak across a chair. There was a
second chamber beyond her own. She went into it, turned down the bed
and called Palla, who came slowly after her.

They kissed each other in silence. Then Ilse went back to her own
room.

CHAPTER XVII

"Jim," said his mother, "Miss Dumont called you on the telephone at an
unusual hour last night. You had gone to your room, and on the chance
that you were asleep I did not speak to you."

That was all--sufficient explanation to discount any reproach from her
son incident on his comparing notes with the girl in question. Also
just enough in her action to convey to the girl a polite hint that the
Shotwell family was not at home to people who telephoned at that
unconventional hour.

On his way to business that morning, Jim telephoned to Palla, but,
learning she was not at home, let the matter rest.

In his sullen and resentful mood he no longer cared--or thought he
didn't, which resulted in the same thing--the accumulation of
increasing bitterness during a dull, rainy working day at the office,
and a dogged determination to keep clear of this woman until effort to
remain away from her was no longer necessary.

For the thing was utterly hopeless; he'd had enough. And in his
bruised heart and outraged common sense he was boyishly framing an
indictment of modern womanhood--lumping it all and cursing it
out--swearing internally at the entire enfranchised pack which the war
had set afoot and had licensed to swarm all over everything and raise
hell with the ancient and established order of things.

The stormy dark came early; and in this frame of mind when he left the
office he sulkily avoided the club.

He very rarely drank anything; but, not knowing what to do, he drifted
into the Biltmore bar.

He met a man or two he knew, but declined all suggestions for the
evening, turned up his overcoat collar, and started through the hotel
toward the northern exit.

And met Marya Lanois face to face.

She was coming from the tea-room with two or three other people, but
turned immediately on seeing him and came toward him with hand
extended.

"Dear me," she said, "you look very wet. And you don't look
particularly well. Have you arrived all alone for tea?"

"I had my tea in the bar," he said. "How are you, Marya?--but I musn't
detain you