eir faces were white and sensual. They moved as forms move in a
dream.

The stories of girls decoyed, spirited away, never heard of again,
returned to Cassy. She had put the orchids beside her. Her flexible
mouth framed a smile.

"You know, for a moment, I had the rare emotion of feeling and fearing
that I was being eloped with."

A pop interrupted. She turned to a man at her elbow. "Only half a glass,
please, and fill it with water." She returned to Paliser, who was
opposite. "I had been thinking of something. I had not noticed where the
car was going; and all of a sudden, I found myself I did not know where.
Then, houp! It got me."

Paliser helped himself to a clam. "The charm of elopements passed with
the post-chaise. Then they had the dignity of danger and pistol shots
through the windows. Nowadays you go off in a Pullman and return as
prosaic as you started."

"Sometimes even more so," Cassy put in.

Paliser helped himself to another clam. "You speak feelingly and that is
only right. This is a very important matter. It is a shame that romance
should have passed with the post-chaise. Why should it not revisit us in
the motor?"

Cassy sipped and considered it. "There ought to be a law on the
subject."

"There is one. You may be summoned for speeding and get your name in the
papers."

"Then the dignity of danger remains."

"But not in clams. Aren't you going to eat any?"

Cassy laughed. "I had some yesterday with Ma Tamby. They did not seem to
agree with her. She became very noisy about a Mrs. Beamish. Who is she?"

"Mrs. Beamish?" Paliser repeated. He also had forgotten. But, with a
click, memory raised a latch. From behind it the lady emerged. "Oh,
she's a cousin of mine."

"Rather distant, I should fancy," said Cassy, who was conscious of the
delay, though not of the click. The delay she had noticed without,
however, divining the cause. But how could she possibly imagine that
Mrs. Beamish had been evolved for the sole purpose of providing her with
basilica opportunities? Yet the fault, if fault there were, resided in
her education. She had never read Eliphas Levi. She did not know that
genii can be evoked.

"Well, she is more my sister's cousin than mine," Paliser anxious to get
out of it, threw in. "I mean my sister has a more cousinly nature."

"I did not know you had a sister," said Cassy, who not only did not know
but did not care. "Though, come to think of it, a sister with a cousinly
natu