get into my things," said Kate.

They all moved toward the door.

Kate passed first; then Eleanor. There hung beside the door-casing a
hook, designed to hold the portiere cord. Eleanor brushed too close;
it caught in the lace at her throat. She pulled up with a jerk, gave a
little cry; the lace held fast. She turned--in the wrong direction.

Bertram saw this tiny accident; he sprang forward, caught the lace,
disentangled her. And to do so, he must reach about her so that his
arms, never quite touching her, yet surrounded her as a circle
surrounds its centre. She turned and looked up to thank him, surprised
him, surprised herself, in that position.

And a wave which was fear and loathing and longing and agitation ran
over her with the speed of an electric current, and left her weak.

Her face, with its own sweet inscrutability, showed little change of
expression; but he caught a dullness and then a glitter of her eye, a
heave of her bosom, a catch of her breath. As he stood there, his
great frame towering above her, something which she feared might be
comprehension came into his eyes. And--

"You make a picture--you two there!" called Kate Waddington from
without. The transitory expression in his eyes--Eleanor saw it now
with triumph--was that of one who has thrown a pearl away. But he
followed.

* * * * *

Dining with Mark Heath in the Hotel Marseillaise that night, Bertram
fell into a spell of musing, a visible melancholy uncommon in him; for
his ill-humors, like his laughters, burned short and violent. Mark
Heath--by this time he was growing into a point of view on his chum
and room mate--remarked it with some amusement and more curiosity.

Mark was casting about for an opening, when Bertram anticipated him.
Staring into the dingy wall of the Hotel Marseillaise, past the
laborers, the outcasts, the French cabmen purring over their cabbage
soup, he said in a tone of musings:

"When Bert Chester grows up and gets rich, he'll take unto himself a
wife. We'll live in a big house in the Western Addition with a bay
frontage. It will be furnished with dinky old dull stuff, and those
swell Japanese prints and paintings. And I'll have two autos and a toy
ranch in the country to play with. We'll give little dances in the big
hall downstairs. I'll lead the opening dance with the missus, and then
I'll just take a dance or so with the best looking girls--the ones I
take a specia