four days and for the ten succeeding Mondays in order
to eke out coal; this was regarded as worse than the loss of a great
battle. Every aspect of the war was so depressing that the coroner's
inquest broke up at once when Major Widdicombe said:

"I get enough of this in the shop, and I'm frozen through. Let's go in
and jaw the women."

Concealing their loneliness, the men entered the drawing-room with the
majestic languor of lions well fed.

Davidge paused to study Mamise from behind a smokescreen that
concealed his stare. She was listening politely to the wife of Holman,
of the War Trade Board. Mrs. Holman's stories were always long, and
people were always interrupting them because they had to or stay mute
all night. Davidge was glad of her clatter, because it gave him a
chance to revel in Mamise. She was presented to his eyes in a kind of
mitigated silhouette against a bright-hued lamp-shade. She was seated
sidewise on a black Chinese chair. On the back of it her upraised arm
rested. Davidge's eyes followed the strange and marvelous outline
described by the lines of that arm, running into the sharp rise of a
shoulder, like an apple against the throat, the bizarre shape of the
head in its whimsical coiffure, the slope of the other shoulder
carrying the caressing glance down that arm to the hand clasping a
sheaf of outspread plumes against her knee, and on along to where one
quaint impossible slipper with a fantastic high heel emerged from a
stream of fabric that flowed on out to the train.

Then with the vision of honorable desire he imagined the body of her
where it disappeared below the shoulders into the possession of the
gown; he imagined with a certain awe what she must be like beneath all
those long lines, those rounded surfaces, those eloquent wrinkles with
their curious little pockets full of shadow, among the pools of light
that satin shimmers with.

In other times and climes men had worn figured silks and satins and
brocades, had worn long gowns and lace-trimmed sleeves, jeweled
bonnets and curls, but now the male had surrendered to the female his
prehistoric right to the fanciful plumage. These war days were grown
so austere that it began to seem wrong even for women to dress with
much more than a masculine sobriety. But the occasion of this ball had
removed the ban on extravagance.

The occasion justified the maximum display of jewelry, too, and Mamise
wore all she had. She had taken her gems from t