Cytherea

evidence, stayed at Eastlake. Fanny, too, with her hair severely plain and an air of practical accomplishment, was occupied with her da

der. But this she resolutely declined-she must, she insisted, maintain her obligation along with his. However, Fanny, like all other women, he thought, was entirely ignorant of the principle of w

lly the first consideration, the jewelled rewards, of wealth. As he visualized, dwelt on, them, their magnetic grace of feeling and body was uppermost: sturdy utilitarian women in the kitchen, red-faced maids dusting his stairs, heavily breasted nurses, mothers, wives a

eel that we exaggerated the situation last night; it all seemed more immediate, bigger,

mendous lot of talk and no result; yes-no one really d

s a lower center-piece. "If you could be whatever you w

sitation. The youth of her expression was happily stained by a

ng conclusive; he was only wretchedly unhappy-wished h

o years-but you can't realize how things have changed in such a short while. The women we knew didn't even smoke then. Wasn't it only five or six years ago they were first allowed to in

any great change," he obj

from now, it was only whispered around and condemned, and it's shouted out today. I wish I had known you sooner; I would ha

of life, guarded from its threatening aspects, her attitude was that, not without patience, she brought him with relative safety through a maze in which otherwise he'd be lost. This was evident now in what he felt to be the complacency of her voice and expression; and a p

dured until Gregory had walked sedately from the room; then she reminded Lee that

I don't agree with you-a child can understand a punishment in which there is some warmth. You are dealing

he asserted; "we are all, men and women and children and g

the dictionary says that it isn't a very good one. And if you are trying to tell

wasn't speaking of the comparative but of the absolute. It is a fact that we are anim

an animal?"

mam

with her instinctive recoiling from life. "I don't see how we got on this subjec

ty in your mind

convenient, I must say, but not fair nor true: it was you who got

children are sick

t," she answered quickly; "for instance, when you

phasis; "we never had an argument that didn'

ick of it," Fanny complained; "I w

h Fanny had been particularly vain because, underneath, he agreed with her opinion about the casual expression of small emotions; he no longer wanted it any more than she did. Yes, at last they were one there. An

side, the country was flooded with a deceptive golden radiance; and he remembered, suddenly, that Alice Lucian had told him to bring Fanny to the Club and a tea that afternoon, which she was giving for Mina Raff. He repeated this to his wife, in a conciliatory regret at h

ar bowl. It was all, practically, Lee Randon reflected, as it had been before and would be again. How few things, out of a worldful, the ordinary individual saw, saw-that was-to comprehend, to experience: a limited number of interiors, certain roads and str

otally ignorant of himself. How much could he explain of Fanny's late state of mind? She had done all that was possible to make it clear to him; with little result. Fanny was an extraordinarily honest person; or, damn it, she seemed to be

the stairs to the upper floor, beyond the radius of the fire; and, though they were not ten feet away, he could not hear a word of what they were saying. At intervals there was an i

ion. "Is Lee here?" she demanded; "but I know he is. The fire is just as attractive at h

," someone ans

ina Raff approached. "It's

nformed her; "I wonder what

er tomorrow morning. I have to be back as

conscious of the warmth, the largeness, in his voice. Fanny whispered to Lee that it was

s?" No, Mina replied, her hours would be too long and uncertain to allow that; probably she would be at the Plaza. Lee had heard the Groves' name mentioned before in connection with Mina Raff; and he made an

improvidence; she had lived with them until, against their intensest objections, she had gone into moving pictures. Probably the Groves' opposit

fish, than her environment: selfishness and success were synonymous. Yet, as a human quality, it was more hated, more reviled, than any other. Its opposite was held as the perfect, the heavenly, ethics of c

t it was wrong. But who could say what any outcome would be? Some people took the chance and others didn't; he had not. Then the question came up of whether he had not failed as it was? No one wo

to think; for it was possible that those who thought, weighed causes and results, hardly lived at all in the sense he meant. All the people he knew were cautious before they were anything else; they existed primarily for their stomachs. The widely

hat had been a source of magic, became nothing more than ugly grey charring logs with a few thin tongues of flame. Lee, with his wife, stopped to say

new picture w

lingeringly holding his; "perhaps you will l

ell me which

ths ago, yes, but not now

erved afterward; "she is as bold as brass

what we are talking about: it's fairly evident that Peyton and Mina Raff are interested in each other, they may be in love; and

y; "and keeps us all, Helena and Gre

ve an awkward silence. That had always been a bar between his family and himself, particularly with the children: he was obliged to maintain an endless hypocrisy about the miracles, the dogmas and affairs, of Sunday school and the church. As a child he had been so filled with a

er of blood; God, bearded and frowning in the severity of chronic judgment, dominated from an architectural throne a throng of the saved in straight garments and sandalled

he sky, they learned, was the habitation of light-winged angels. The ark was still reported on its memorable voyage, with its providential pairs of animals gathered from every zone, but there was a growing reticence about Jon

nstruction, the influences, widely held paramount in the welding of polite Christian characters, Fanny was indefatigable-the piece of silver firmly clasped in the hand for collection, the courtesy when addressed

his mind ceaselessly. Cytherea's disturbing charm was real, as definite as Fanny's quiet actuality. However, he wasn't interested in an abstract arraignment of life, but intent only on the truth about himself.

been restricted by artificial barriers thrown about the rebellious integrity of his fundamental being. Few children could stand out against the combi

problem of s

hem nobility; but, at the same time, didn't it develop in the parents the utmost callous selfishness; didn't the latter, as their needs

most sacred of earthly ties-ignominiously resembled the properties of fly paper. He turned abruptly from that graceless thought:

alk to Claire,"

he informed her; "besides, you'll

will t

e a girl. The mechanical sweep of her hand with a brush kept a brief sleeve falling back from the thinness of her arm. How delicately methodical she was-an indispensab

omplete honesty, "before we were married, while we were engaged, we had an impracticable romantic attraction for each other. I know that I thought of you all the time, day and night; and, just because you e

ng of her hair Fanny was motionless and intent. "I don't say it decreased, Fanny, that it lost any of its importance; but it did change; and in you as well as me. I

"oh, and that tenderness," her cheeks were bright

ether. We are tied by a thousand strings-common disappointments and joy and sickness and hope and pain and heaven knows what else. We're held by habit, too, and convenience and the o

y convention and our neighbors that keep you with me? You have no right to insist that your horridness is true of me, either. I-I could hear music, if you would let me." She sank on the little cushioned bench bef

od, carried him over to her. He took Fanny, with her face strained away from him, into his arms. "Don't be an idiot," he begg

you mean

nty you assured me of? If you go on like this I shall never be able to tell you m

ny more; and I suppose I should have been prepared to have you say things to

chance to prove th

aving him standing in a sole unsparing illumination. Yet in her extreme resentment she was, he recognized, rubbing Vaseline into her finger nail

latter time, however, she had not wept-at the point of dissolving into the old surrender she had turned away from him, both in reality and metaphorically, and fallen asleep in an unexpected cold reserve. He was sorry, for it brought into their relationship

nvolved financial transaction followed. What he wanted to ascertain was, with a preferred stock bearing eight per cent at a stated capitalization, and the gift of a bonus of common, share for share, how much pie would remain to be cut up between

; send Miss

brains of his organization; and it perfected the details. The stenographer, Miss Mathews, was very elaborately blonde, very personable; and, dictating to her, Lee Randon remembe

lic, of erratic, but the word was erotic, conduct. On more than one occasion he had peremptorily telegraphed for Lee to join him at some unexpected place, for a party. Once, following a ball at the Gra

ll very strange, upside down: what rot that was about the infinite capacity for taking pains! He supposed it wouldn't do to make this publ

you? Because if you do I'll have your young

might like me; they show me a very good time; but somehow I am not anxious. I guess in a way it's the other married girls I see: either they housework at home, and I cou

ter in a kitchen than you are here, taking dictation from me; and I am not sure you would be more valuable at home with a child or two. You are a very unusual stenographer, rapid and accurate, a

That's what throws me off. Some

at it is very different from what most people insist; I don't think it is very useful around the house; it has more to do with the pretty hat than with a dishpan. If y

wild enough," she

he insisted; "if it is no

o rest on the surrounding hills, was grey with a faint suffusion of yellow at the western horizon. It was all as dreary, as sodden, as possible. Eastlake, appearing b

; Christopher, the gardener, came sloshing over the sod to take it into the garage; and, within, he found the dinner-table set for three. "It's Claire," his wife informed him; "she called

he brightly illuminated room beyond the hall Helena and Gregory were playing parchesi-Gregory firmly grasped the cup from which he int

y exclaimed; "and you took i

ess a girl can make a mistake without having som

move to a safety where you don't belong." He shook the dice from the cup.

anyhow. Now I'm wearing waists and buttoned skirts I'd just as

was almost home, and she went away. She just got up like nothing was happening." Helena put in, "Neither there was." Lee Randon took her place. "You can beat me instead," he proposed. His interest in the game, he felt, was as false as Helena's pretended musical preoccupation; but he rolled t

a slim low-breasted figure, gracefully broad shoulders; and her face, it might be because of its definite, almost sharp, outline, held the stamp of decided opinions. Claire's appearance, he recognized, her bearing, gave an impression of arrogance which, however, was only superficially true-she could be very disagreeable in situations, with people, that she found inferior, b

up disposed of, when Claire said abr

im extremely. Fanny gasped, and then nodded warningly toward the waitress, leaving the di

tell you?" Fa

d; "I told him. It was a g

Lee put in vigorously; "but

here's Ira. But it was an impossible position; it couldn't go on, Peyton was absolutely wretched

perfectly amazing to me, after the men you have met, that you don't know them. You must keep them going in the right direction; you can't let them stop, or look around, once; I only

eyton. You see, he has always been very pure; all his friends at Princeton were like that; they were proud of it and very severe on the other. And afterwards, when he went into th

rvelous thing for a girl to find. I still think that; and yet, I don't know. If he were different, had had more experience

nny stopped, at a loss for a

herself. I haven't talked to her; I can't make up my mind about that. Probably it would do no good. Pey

"I wish I could shake sense into you. Up to a point this i

Claire should do?"

nished from her face. "There is so much," she replied equably; "they haven't discussed it enough; why, it ought to take a year, t

Claire Morri

terrible done to her." Fanny's voice had the hard cold edge of fanatical conviction. "If she ha

if you are right, Fanny, and it's necessary to treat a man like a green hunter, then this was bound to occur. I couldn't do anything so-so humiliating; he could bolt sooner or later.

f he wants to go, to be with Mina Raff, how in God's name can I stop it? I won't have him in my bed with another woman in his heart; I made that clear to you. And

ed a housewife; though heaven knows he hasn't turned to one. It's her blonde, no bland, charm and destructive air of innocence. I've admitted and understood too much; but I coul

strength and position. "Just last week I was telling Lee that I belonged before the war-things were so different then, and, apparently, it's only in my house they haven't changed. We are frightfully behind the times, and you'd be surprised at how glad we ar

s friends, and Mina's crowd won't have that for a moment: he can't go through her world judging men by their slang and by whom they knew at college. I envy him, it will be a tremendously interesting experience." If her eyes were particularly brilliant it was because they were surrounded by an extreme d

and, at five cents a point, he had to watch the game. On a specially big hand she piqued and repiqued. "That," she declared, "will pay you for caputting me." The jargon of their preoccupation, "A point of six; yes, to the ace; paid; and a quatorze, kings," was the only soun

re said, when Fanny had gone; "bu

k any more o

y a little for Peyton. I love him very much; I needed him, and my love, more than I can explain. As Fanny as good as told me, I am a wild bird; anything, almost, with what is behind me, may happen. It was just the irony of chance

Lee asserted. "I haven't

d it's too much to drag out

erested in morals. Lord, Claire, how little you know me. And as for bothering

won't argue with him," she insisted, "you can't. But we needn't discuss it-

it is only for myself; I am most infernally curious abo

he hasn't had enough experience to exp

nine side. Where the man is considered it is always in the most damnable light. If, in the novels, a man leaves his home he is a rascal of the darkest sort, and his end is a r

t beautiful women alive. It lasted five months before it was found out and ended; and his wife and he had been sick of living together. After it was over she was pleased at being

llainous person, and the other a victim. I'm inclined to think that most of the ideas about life and conduct are lifted from

changed much, yet; but you don't hear the women talk as I do. I don't like them, as I said;

g majority; you haven't an idea how it feels and, in particular, of what it thinks of you, smoking and gambling and damning

, except in the abstract. This at once had the elements of a lie and the unelaborate truth; he couldn't see how his curiosity applied to him, an

assertion to Fanny; the boy would make it difficult, if not impossible, to discuss such intimate relationships. And as Claire had pointed out, the very openness of Peyton's life wou

n you," Claire remarked; "go up wh

him that, perhaps, with Claire, he might discover something that would

ch, go to Italy, to give Peyton his divorce-Floren

rticulate-a far different thing. It had nothing to do with Italy, or any other country; his intentness had been withdrawn from the surfaces of life, however charming; they had plunged into the profounder mysteries of being. Lee had gained nothing if not a certain freedom from exterior circumstance; his implied revolt aga

ess; Fanny's unfinished handkerchief, her stool, were without the warmth of familiar association. It might have been a place into which he had wandered by accident, where he didn't belong, wouldn't stay. It was inconceivable that, above him, his wife and children were sleeping; the ceiling, the sup

swung open, the end impended, but he was unable to see the faces of the man and woman; when he looked anxiously a blind spot intervened. The morning found him unrefreshed, impatient; and he was glad that his early breakfast was solitary; Lee didn't want

eful dignity. Her gaze, even more than commonly, rested on her husband. "I had a wretched night, too," she told him; "my head is like a kite. I've thought and tho

y, only for yourself. I mean, for instance, th

lize it, but there are loads of obligations I get dreadfully tired of, like the Social Service when it is my month to follow the accounts, and visits to Annie Hazard who has a cancer of the stomach and is dying, and thinking every day what to get you and the children and the servants to eat. Suppose, some morning, I didn't stir, but just rested in bed-what would happen? What did happen last winter when I had pleurisy? Why, the w

ave a better wife; you've spoiled me outrageously; I feel

like that, Lee. I object to it very much in Claire; I can't help believing that she thinks it is smart or funny. And you encourage her. If Claire had been different-no, don't interrupt me-this would never have happened. Y

whole thing?"

, but you won'

at above al

y without love would be hard, and there isn't any love without duty." Fanny evidently grew aware of her threatening

ifully," he hastened to assure her

that is a splendid word. Don't eat that apple, it isn't baked; I can see from here." She rang. "Varney," Fanny addressed the maid, "

ed; "it might have an excell

more, you're not even a young man, and you can't take liberties with your digestion. You are quite like Helena with her prayers-i

out of the same gold clot

d for her overwhelmed him; and he held Fanny against him in a silent and straining embrace. For that reason he was annoyed at himself when, sitting through an uneventful evening, his simile of the pig, enormously fat, sleepily contented, in its pen, returned to h

course. Christopher was his wife. Now that, Lee told himself, with a vision of the gardener's moustache, sadly drooping and stained with tobacco, his pale doubtful gaze, was inexcusable. He abruptly directed his thoughts to Peyton and Claire Morris; how exact Clai

superior blood strayed into expected and unexpected places? It was probable, but not suscep

I hope he doesn't come here," she said vigorously: "I should refuse to speak to him or have him at my table. Outrageous! I can't make out why you take it so coolly. Mina

was convinced, forever; and this, on the whole, he concluded, was fortunate; for, perhaps, if prostitution were thoroughly discredited, marriage might, in some Elysian future, be swept of most of its rubbish. Houses of prostitution, mistresses, like charity, absorbed and dissipated a g

e for the opening scenes, the story for the moment was incomprehensible to him. However, it had to do with the misadventures of a simple country girl in what, obviously, was the conventional idea of a most sophisticated and urbane society. Lee waited

tive minds could be carried away, lost, in the convention of her flat mobile effigy! Yet, after a little, he found that he as well was absorbed in the atmosphere of emotional verity she created. It was clear to him now that not the Mina Raff in New York, but this, was the importan

d lust without an identifying human trait. Not for a second did Lee believe in his grease-pencilled incontinence and perfidy; but the child he seduced, incidents of the seduction charged with the beauty of pity, thronged Lee's mind with sensations and ideas. Ho

tself seek to obliterate-as though they were a breathing menace-all who stood outside its doors? There was something terribly wrong in the reaction of life to religion, or in the religion that w

ing house. The baby was sick, a doctor had left shortly before, and one minute clenched hand rested on the mother's bare breast. Lee found himself gazing fixedly

arless shocked regard as white and inhuman as plaster of Paris. Emotion choked at Lee's throat; and, in a sense of shame at having been so shaken, he admitted that Mina Raff had an extraordinary ability: he evaded the impressive reality by a return to the trivial fact. In the gloom there was o

n turned her maliciously from house to house, a woman had betrayed her. Finally the tide of Christianity rose, burst, in a biblical father who drove her into a night of snow that was a triumph of the a

lacing of its merriment: it laughed delightedly at a gaunt feminine vindictiveness hurrying through the snow on an errand of destruction. The fact that the girl's maternity was transcendent in a generous and confident heart, made lovely by spiritual passion, escaped everyone. The

illing. There, he believed, they were not singular; or, anyhow, he wasn't; he saw what he was convinced was the same failure in the men past youth about him. But in Fanny there was, he recognized, that fierce if narrow singleness of impulse, of purity. His though

that Fanny-for all her marked superiority-was definitely arrayed with the righteous mob. She was sorry for those who failed in the discharge of duty to God and man, and she worked untiringly to re

would be as useless as it would be false. But he had no impulse to forego his purpose; he was engaged to help Claire who was too proud to help hers

deration. She lay outside the stream of ordinary responsibilities. What held him steady was the belief that she and Peyton were not so important to each other as they thought; Claire needed him more badly than Mina. There was a possibil

nd Claire, at a hunt breakfast at Willing Spencer's in Nantbrook Valley, north of Eastlake, when, with a plate of food in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, he collided with Peyton Morris, his face pinched and his eyes dull from a lack of re

you," the y

ult to talk to Peyton; he was obviously miserable from the ne

hing to be said for me," his voice was

now where to begin. With another situation practically the same, I might have agreed with yo

" the other pointed out; "Mina

visions of solitary grandeur. My interest comes only from Claire and some personal curiosity; Mina Raff doesn't require anyone's assistance. Of

d him, with a brutally cold face, "is th

d, of what you propose to do. In a week, in your frame of mind, you'd have a hundred fights; there would be time for nothing else but knocking out the men who insulted you. You'll collapse over Sunday if you a

go had said that I was like this, that I was even capable of it, I'd have ruined him. God, what a thing to happen! I want you to understand that we, Mina and I, didn't

knock you on the head? You've been very unfortunate:

na happy I don't

you are not contented, easy in mind, how can she be happy? You have got to believe entirely in what you are doing, it m

t on general principles: running away from his wife and child, with another woman, an actress, that's what it is! I tell myself that, but the words haven't a trace of meaning or impor

we were it. We were, still, there; and I got a heavy idea of what I liked and was like. We were very damned honorable and the icing on the cake generally. That was good after I left college, too; but what's the use of goin

e Randon prono

there isn't much use in cal

he truth is that, while you want this now, in a year, or two years, or five, you'll demand the other. You think it is going to be different from everything else in heaven and earth, you're convi

r pains. If I don't know the side of her you do, I have become fairly familiar with one you haven't dreamed of. She is a greater actress than people yet re

lf. But what she is doing is dragging into her genius what it needs. She loves you now, and tomorrow she'll love a Belgian violinist, a great engineer, a Spanish prince at San Sebastian.

her, and without much reason, she loves you too. When Mina is done with you and you stray back, from, perhaps, South America, Claire won't be here. I don't mean that she will have gone a

"We won't get far talking," Peyton added; "even if all you have said is a fact. You

tly what I have no intention of doing. In the interest of Claire

ten. It's cursed impertinent: I don't se

d into the eddying throng, the intermingling ceaseless conversations. Almost at once Peyton Morris disappeared, and Lee found Fanny at his shoulder. Neither of them fox-hunted, although they hacked a great deal over the country roads and fields, and they had ridden to the Spencers' that morning. Fanny

in the direction in which Peyton had disa

out of his self-complacency. But, on the whole, that is not possible. It's temporar

o tell you, if she missed you, that she had something for you to see. Wasn't it strange that she said nothing to me about it? I sho

cially. "I'll go over tonight, after dinner. They must be prett

ow. The clouds were broken and aqueous, and the grass held a silver veil of fine raindrops. Only an inconsiderable part of those present were following the hounds; the others, in a restricted variety of sporting garb-the men

a shuttered box, holding the fox, and an old brown and white hound bitch, wise with many years of hunting, to follow and establish and announce the scent. "If yo

lanced fleetly around with incredibly sharp black eyes. The men shouted and flung up their arms; but the animal was indifferent to their laudable efforts. The hunt, Lee Randon thought, had assumed an aspect of the ridiculous; the men and women on expensive excited horses, the pack yelping from beyond a road, the expe

minutes," the

the trail to where it went under the fence, and turned, instead of bearing to the right, to the left. There were various exclamations. A kennel man declared, "She knows what she's about, and the fox will swing into Sibley's Cover." Someone else more sceptically asserted that the hound was a fool. Her sustained cry floated back from under the hill; and, i

r; but he found no support. Willing Spencer, kept out of the field by a broken collar bone, gazed at him with lifted eyebrows. Fanny and Lee turned to their horses, held for them by a groom at a mounting bl

o intention of resting until every hope was exhausted. What particularly impressed him-he must speak of it to Peyton-was that no matter where Morris might get he would find life monotonously the same. It was very much like mountain climbing-every peak looked different, more iridescent and desirable, from th

t drive himself on the rocks, on the first reef where he disregarded the clamor of warning bells and carefully charted directions, but he was no Columbus for the discovery of a magical island, a Cuba, of spices and delectable palms. Peyton had looked with a stolid

piness might hang. Truth was once more wholly restrained, hidden, dissimulated; the skillful shifting of painted masks, false-faces, continued uninterrupted its progress. A new lethargy enveloped Lee: his interest, his confidence, in what he was trying to prevent waned. What did it matter who went and who stayed? I

of coffee and cigarettes. It was composed, he saw at once, of Peyton's friends; as he entered three young men rose punctiliously-Christian Wager, with hair growing close like a mat on a narrow skull and a long irregular nose; Gilbert Bromhead, a round figure and a face with the contours and e

once with the effort. Christian Wager, who was in London with a branch of an American banking firm, had married an English girl strikingly named Evadore. She was large, with black hair cut in a scanty bang; but beyond these unastonishing facts there was nothin

Claire was metallic, turned in, with an indifference to her position that was actually rude, upon herself. But Mrs. Gilbert Bromhead made up for any silence around her in a seductive, low-pitched continuous talking. A part of this was superficially addressed to Claire and the solidly amazed Evadore; but all its underlying

moke they made casual remarks about their present occupations and terse references to companions and deeds of the past. Only Peyton had been of any athletic importance; he had played university foot-ball; and, in view of th

rue, but Princeton was teaching us what it meant to be men. In that game, Mo

m was told to sink a heel in any back

mhead assented; "and some graduate coaches are

the war and in civil life we were and are behind the big issues. This new license and socialistic rant, the mental and moral bounders, must be held down, and we

tly like the president of a locomotive works. You have been dining with the best, too; I can tel

hat's really awfully good. He do

Anglo-Saxon blood and tradition, with the English and American exchange ruling

we were near

romhead's wife hesitated; then, confidentially, she told Lee that she adored to sit on stairs. "Very well," he assen

she had already so adroitly conveyed; "patches

than

you the story about the man in the department store and the drawers." Their contact was more pronounced. "Isn't that English girl extraordinary? I didn't believe for a minute that was her own color till I was close to it. Her hair isn't dyed; but why does she wear that skimpy bang?" Again she laughed, a pure golden

n Morris? I thought he was right nice until you came." She turned for a better view, through the balustrade, of the doors beyond, and then drew her skirt close so that he could move up beside her. "It's just like a smoke-house in there," she repor

ross with you? But ... somehow I didn't mind. Although you mustn't again, so publicly. I w

on; but now, for Lee Randon, it was without possibilities, hardly more than perfunctory. A shade of vexation invaded her bearing, and she moved a significant infinitesimal fraction away from him. Then she discovered a wind blowing down the stairs. "I have to take such good care of myself,

she never stopped. I'll admit she's skillful; but she needn't think I'm a fool. But you will never guess what I want to tell you. My dear Lee, that Mrs. Grove wrote me a letter. I have it here in my dress,

R MRS.

ou here, at my house in New York. Engagements make it difficult for me to leave at present. I hope you will not fi

crispness of a name often attached

ther cool,

n honest wronged woman or something objectionable of the sor

tinent as she admits it may be, you must consid

l go see her you

ssible approach to Mina Raff; I had a chance to try Peyton, but it di

s said: "You

thers, and what other family you have is away. It might be use

e as though she were in the room-the utmost New York self-

n idea I had better go to New York and try what can be done there. I got along well enough

'm simply enraged at myself, Lee. Why, I should let him go with cheers-except where I w

. "I'll have a wire sent to the Groves, say so

ther," sh

ampagne left, and it created the intensest excitement. I told them it would do no g

it, but perhaps for now. This is a very appropriate time for yo

sses filled with ice." They gathered about the bare table, and Peyton Morris ranged the dark green bottles, capped in white foil, on the sideboa

a beverage and not a delight; ale a soporific; and Rhine wines he ignored. Champagne held in solution the rhythm of old Vienna waltzes, of ball rooms with formal greenery, floating with passions as light as the tarleton skirts floating about dancing feet. But it w

longed most especially to masked balls, divine features vanishing under a provocative edge of black satin. He thought of little hidden tables and fantastic dresses, fragile emotion; lips and knees and garters. It all melted away before the intentness of Claire's expression. Peyton was doggedly holding

aire insisted; "I wo

, they had gathered to renew ... friendships unbroken with their wives, their true wives; oceans couldn't separate them, nor time, nor-nor silver locks among th

e quantities of champagne and men and principally girls; but they're not girls at all, if you see what I mean, not by several accidents

Lee wasn't drunk, but then, he recognized, neither was he sober. Why should he be the latter? he demanded seriously of himself. His glass was empty, the champagne was all gone. Mrs. Gilbert Bromhead was perceptibly leaning on Christian Wager, her skill

speed, he sang to an emphatic lifted hand of a being in the South Seas who wore leaves, plenty of leaves ... But none of the silly songs now could compare with-with the bully that, on the levees, he was going to cut down. Howeve

ife like Fanny, children as good as Helena and Gregory: he, Lee Randon, was a damned ingrate! That bloody doll-he had threatened to put it in