By the time his anger had cooled down, Thor regretted the words with
which he had left his father's presence, and continued to regret them.
They were braggart and useless. Whatever he might feel impelled to do,
for either Leonard Willoughby or Jasper Fay, he could do better without
announcing his intentions beforehand. He experienced a sense of guilt
when, on the next day, and for many days afterward, his father showed by
his manner that he had been wounded.

Lois Willoughby showed that she, too, had been wounded. The process of
"easing the first one off," besides affording him side-lights on a
woman's heart, involved him in an erratic course of blowing hot and cold
that defeated his own ends. When he blew cold the chill was such that he
blew hotter than ever to disperse it. He could see for himself that this
seeming capriciousness made it difficult for Lois to preserve the equal
tenor of her bearing, though she did her best.

He had kept away from her for a week or more, and would have continued
to do so longer had he not been haunted by the look his imagination
conjured up in her eyes. He knew its trouble, its bewilderment, its
reflected heartache. "I'm a damned cad," he said to himself; and
whenever he worked himself up to that point remorse couldn't send him
quickly enough to pay her a visit of atonement.

He knew she was at home because he met one or two of the County Street
ladies coming away from the house. With knowing looks they told him he
should find her. They did not, however, tell him that she had another
visitor, whose voice he recognized while depositing his hat and overcoat
on one of the Regency chairs in the tapestried square hall.

"Oh, don't go yet," Lois was saying. "Here's Dr. Thor Masterman. He'll
want to see you."

But Rosie insisted on taking her departure, making polite excuses for
the length of her call.

She was deliciously pretty; he saw that at once on entering. Wearing the
new winter suit for which she had pinched and saved, and a hat of the
moment's fashion, she easily dazzled Thor, though Lois could perceive,
in details of material, the "cheapness" that in American eyes is the
most damning of all qualities. Rosie's face was bright with the flush of
social triumph, for the County Street ladies had been kind to her, and
she had had tea with all the ceremony of which she read in the
accredited annals of good society. If she had not been wondering whether
or not the County Street la