yed a period of
quiet. Without his exactly arranging it, a definite plan for the
afternoon was growing up in his mind--a plan which, it must be
confessed, had been first suggested by Tucker's idea of staying at home,
a plan based on a vision of Jane-Ellen and Willoughby holding the
kitchen in solitary state.

Crane knew that luncheons at Eliot's were long ceremonies. Food was
served and eaten slowly, you sat a long time over coffee and cigars, and
at the smallest encouragement, Eliot would bring out his grandfather's
Madeira. And after that you were unusually lucky if you escaped a visit
to the stables, and that meant the whole afternoon.

So he awaited a good opportunity after lunch was over, when Tucker,
under pretense of reading a newspaper, had sunk into a comfortable doze,
and Mrs. Falkener, while carrying on a fairly connected conversation
with Eliot, was really concentrated on preventing Lefferts from taking
Cora into another room. This was Crane's chance. He slipped into the
hall, found his coat and hat, unearthed his chauffeur and motor, and
drove quickly home, sending back the car at once to wait for the others.

He did not, as his impulse was, go in the kitchen way. He did not want
to do anything that might annoy Jane-Ellen. At the same time, he
rebelled at the notion of having always to offer an excuse for seeing
her, as if he were so superior a being that he had to explain how he
could stoop to the level of her society. He wanted to say frankly that
he had come home because he wanted more than anything in the world to
see her again.

The first thing he noticed as he went up the steps of the piazza was
Willoughby sleeping in the warm afternoon sun. Then he was aware of the
sound of a victrola playing dance music. The hall-door stood wide open;
he looked in. Smithfield and Jane-Ellen were dancing.

Though no dancer himself, Crane had never been aware of any prejudice on
the subject; indeed, he had sometimes thought that those who protested
were more dangerously suggestive than the dances themselves. But now he
felt a wave of protest sweep over him; the closeness, the identity of
intention, seemed to him an intolerable form of intimacy.

The two were quite unconscious of his presence, and he stood there for
several minutes, stood there, indeed, until Jane-Ellen's hair fell down
and she had to stop to rearrange it. She looked very pretty as she stood
panting and putting it up again, but she exerted no att