em, with such a lot of solemn thought, discuss and prepare their
attitudes toward her, all in vain, she had, somehow, aggravated her
original offense in running away.

And, just as suddenly as they had begun talking about her, they
stopped. Rodney and the twins, living alone in the perfect house, under
the ministrations of a housekeeper, a head nurse and an undiminished
corps of servants, came to be accepted as a fact that could be mentioned
without any string of commiserations tied to it. Their world wagged on
as usual. If, as John Williamson said, the hole where Rose had been torn
out of it had never been closed up, people managed to walk around the
edge of it with an apparently complete unawareness that it was there.
There were fresher themes for gossip:

Hermione Woodruff's amazing marriage, for example, to a dapper little
futurist painter named Bunting, ten years, the uncharitable said,
younger than she was. And then the Randolphs! After all the thrilling
events of their romance, were they drifting on the reefs? There were
straws that indicated the wind was blowing that way.

This was the state of things when Jimmy Wallace threw his bomb.

There was always a warm, corner in Jimmy Wallace's bachelor heart for
youth, and innocence, and enthusiasm. Especially for young girls who
were innocent and enthusiastic. But since he suspected himself of a
tendency to idealize these qualities, even to sentimentalize upon them,
he generally kept a cautious distance off. Rose, with the bloom that was
on her, and the glow that radiated from her the night he was introduced
to her at a dinner party at the Williamsons', had struck him--he was
unconscious of this mental process no doubt--as a person whom it would
be difficult, at close range, to remain quite level-headed about.

Consequently, though his and Rodney's common friendship for the Lakes
had drawn him rather intimately into their circle, his attitude toward
Rose herself throughout had remained deliberately detached and
impersonal. He was not in the least priggish about it. He was quite
willing to let it appear that he liked her and to admit that she liked
him. But their talk had always been not only objective, but about
objects comparatively remote; chorus-girls, for example, and Norse
sagas, to take at random two of his wide assortment of hobbies.

He never felt himself in any danger of idealizing Violet Williamson or
Bella Forrester, and they, along with their respecti