ed artistic fingers, and held it in uneasy beatitude. How
wonderful! She--the beautiful and adored hostess, of whose sweetness and
charm he heard even her own guests murmur to one another--it was her
actual flesh-and-blood hand that lay in his--thrillingly tangible. Oh,
adventure beyond all merit, beyond all hoping!

But every now and then, the outer door facing them would open on some
newcomer, and John had hastily to release her soft magnetic fingers and
sit demure, and jealously overhear her effusive welcome to those
innocent intruders, nor did his brow clear till she had shepherded them
within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this
section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the
jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues
and the clatter of cups and spoons. 'Get me an ice, please--strawberry,'
she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual
flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, he found a
young actor beside her in his cosy corner, and his jealous fancy almost
saw _their_ hands dispart. He stood over them with a sickly smile, while
Winifred ate her ice. When he returned from depositing the empty saucer,
the player-fellow was gone, and in remorse for his mad suspicion he
stooped and reverently lifted her fragrant finger-tips to his lips. The
door behind his back opened abruptly.

'Goodbye,' she said, rising in a flash. The words had the calm
conventional cadence, and instantly extorted from him--amid all his
dazedness--the corresponding 'Goodbye'. When he turned and saw it was Mr.
Glamorys who had come in, his heart leapt wildly at the nearness of his
escape. As he passed this masked ruffian, he nodded perfunctorily and
received a cordial smile. Yes, he was handsome and fascinating enough
externally, this blonde savage.

'A man may smile and smile and be a villain,' John thought. 'I wonder
how he'd feel, if he knew I knew he beats women.'

Already John had generalized the charge. 'I hope Cecilia will keep him
at arm's length,' he had said to Winifred, 'if only that she may not
smart for it some day.'

He lingered purposely in the hall to get an impression of the brute, who
had begun talking loudly to a friend with irritating bursts of laughter,
speciously frank-ringing. Golf, fishing, comic operas--ah, the Boeotian!
These were the men who monopolized the ethereal divinities.

But this brusque separation fr