e off the boots, but I'll keep on my coat for a few
moments."

He laughed as he knelt again. "I certainly am getting broken in. I have
known Englishwomen to pull off their husband's hunting-boots after a
hard day's work--"

"The idea!"

"Very good idea. Do you mean that you would not?"

"Well, I might, as a return favor. You need not take all night to pull
off mine."

"You might, at least, let virtue be its own reward. It's not often it
has the chance."

"Well, get up and don't be an idiot. I suppose you have been flirting in
the conservatory all the evening and haven't had time to readjust your
mood."

"Mrs. Hofer has no conservatory. Great oversight. But I did sit out a
dance or two in that room with the immense window--"

"With whom?"

"I have forgotten her name. Will you have a cigarette?"

"No, but you may smoke if you like."

He had settled himself in a deep chair on the opposite side of the
hearth. There was a silence of nearly ten minutes, until Isabel,
suddenly removing her coat, brought Gwynne out of his reverie.

"I cannot say that to-night was in any sense a repetition of my own
experience at Arcot," he said, abruptly. "That night--I have tried to
forget it--I had enough adulation to turn any man's head. I fancy it
_was_ pretty well turned, and that made the wrench during the small
hours the more severe. Still, it has been an interesting evening, and
one or two things happened."

"What?" Isabel was full of her own experiences, but too much of a woman
to betray the fact when a man wanted to talk about himself.

"I danced for a while, but I had had exercise enough during the day, and
didn't care particularly about it. Besides, all the girls I danced with,
and that one I sat up-stairs with for a few minutes, not only talked my
head off, but quizzed me, and I did not understand it. To my amazement,
I learned not long after that they know who I am. Can you imagine how it
got out?"

"They know everything. It is an old saying that the San Francisco girls
scent a stranger the moment he leaves the tram at the Oakland mole, and
know all about him before he has registered. The obscurest knight could
not hide himself in this town. Rosewater alone saved you so long. How
did they quiz you?"

"Each began at once to talk about my 'distinguished relative, Elton
Gwynne.' I may be more dense than most, or perhaps I was merely bored,
but I assumed that they thought I was his brother and knew his
whereabou