e said.
"You wouldn't think that sensitiveness was my weak point. But it is.
I've stood up to a Birmingham mob that was waiting to lynch me and
enjoyed the experience; but I'd run ten miles rather than face a drawing-
room of well-dressed people with their masked faces and ironic
courtesies. It leaves me for days feeling like a lobster that has lost
its shell."

"I wouldn't say it, if I didn't mean it," answered Joan; "but you haven't
got to trouble yourself about that . . . You're quite passable." She
smiled. It seemed to her that most women would find him more than
passable.

He shook his head. "With you," he said. "There's something about you
that makes one ashamed of worrying about the little things. But the
others: the sneering women and the men who wink over their shoulder while
they talk to you, I shall never be able to get away from them, and, of
course, wherever I go--"

He stopped abruptly with a sudden tightening of the lips. Joan followed
his eyes. Mrs. Phillips had swallowed the smoke and was giggling and
spluttering by turns. The yellow ostrich feather had worked itself loose
and was rocking to and fro as if in a fit of laughter of its own.

He pushed back his chair and rose. "Shall we join the others?" he said.

He moved so that he was between her and the other room, his back to the
open doors. "You think I ought to?" he said.

"Yes," she answered firmly, as if she were giving a command. But he read
pity also in her eyes.

"Well, have you two settled the affairs of the kingdom? Is it all
decided?" asked Airlie.

"Yes," he answered, laughing. "We are going to say to the people, 'Eat,
drink and be wise.'"

He rearranged his wife's feather and smoothed her tumbled hair. She
looked up at him and smiled.

Joan set herself to make McKean talk, and after a time succeeded. They
had a mutual friend, a raw-boned youth she had met at Cambridge. He was
engaged to McKean's sister. His eyes lighted up when he spoke of his
sister Jenny. The Little Mother, he called her.

"She's the most beautiful body in all the world," he said. "Though
merely seeing her you mightn't know it."

He saw her "home"; and went on up the stairs to his own floor.

Joan stood for a while in front of the glass before undressing; but felt
less satisfied with herself. She replaced the star in its case, and took
off the regal-looking dress with the golden girdle and laid it carelessly
aside. She seemed to be