rry had seen the extraordinary
Kerr before; not shaken hands with him, perhaps--perhaps not even heard
his name; but somewhere, across some distance, once glimpsed him, and
had never quite shaken the memory from his mind. For there was something
marked, notable, unforgettable in that lean distinctiveness. Against the
sleek form of the men they met and shook hands with, he flashed
out--seemed in contrast fairly electric. She saw him, just ahead of her
where the crowd was thickening in the door of the supper-room, making
way for Clara through the press with that exasperating solicitude of
his that was half ironic. And the large broadside offered by her
elegant Harry, matter-of-factly towing Ella by the elbow, herself
conscious of a curl or two awry, and Judge Buller tramping heavily at
her side, all took on to her the aspect of a well-chosen peep-show with
the satanic Kerr officiating as showman. Even the smooth and pallid
Clara, who usually coerced by her sheer correctness, failed to dominate
this fantastic image; rather, she took on, as she was handed into the
supper-room, the aspect of his chief exhibit.

The room, hot, polished, flaring reflections of electric lights from its
glistening floor, announced itself the heart of high festivity, through
the midst of which their entrance made an added ripple. The flushed
faces of the women under their flowers, under their pale-tinted hats,
with their smiling recognitions to Clara, to Flora, to Ella, smiled with
a sharpened interest. It proclaimed that Kerr was a stranger, and, in a
circle which found itself a little stale for lack of innovations, a
desirable one. Exclamatory greetings, running into skirmishes of talk,
here and there halted their progress, and even after they had settled
about their table in the center of the room the attention of one and
another was drawn over the shoulder to some special, trans-table
recognition.

Apparently the dominant note of their party was Ella's clamorous
selection for the supper; but to Flora the more real thing was the
atmosphere of excitement and mystery she had been moving in all the
evening. She was pursued by the obsession of something more about to
happen--something imminent--though, of course, nothing would; at least,
how could anything happen here, to them? And by "them," she meant
herself and these people around her so stupidly talking--the eternal
repetition of the story she had read out that evening to Clara, and not
one