had been one of amusement,
changed consciously, and she smiled with polite acquiescence.

"As you please, Mrs. Porter," she answered. She raised her eyebrows
slightly. "I am, as the politicians say, 'in the hands of my friends.'"

"Entirely too much in the hands of my friends," she repeated, as she
turned away. This was the twelfth time during that same winter that
she and Mr. King had been placed next to one another at dinner, and it
had passed beyond the point when she could say that it did not matter
what people thought as long as she and he understood. It had now
reached that stage when she was not quite sure that she understood
either him or herself. They had known each other for a very long time;
too long, she sometimes thought, for them ever to grow to know each
other any better. But there was always the chance that he had another
side, one that had not disclosed itself, and which she could not
discover in the strict social environment in which they both lived.
And she was the surer of this because she had once seen him when he did
not know that she was near, and he had been so different that it had
puzzled her and made her wonder if she knew the real Reggie King at all.

It was at a dance at a studio, and some French pantomimists gave a
little play. When it was over, King sat in the corner talking to one
of the Frenchwomen, and while he waited on her he was laughing at her
and at her efforts to speak English. He was telling her how to say
certain phrases and not telling her correctly, and she suspected this
and was accusing him of it, and they were rhapsodizing and exclaiming
over certain delightful places and dishes of which they both knew in
Paris with the enthusiasm of two children. Miss Langham saw him off
his guard for the first time and instead of a somewhat bored and clever
man of the world, he appeared as sincere and interested as a boy.

When he joined her, later, the same evening, he was as entertaining as
usual, and as polite and attentive as he had been to the Frenchwoman,
but he was not greatly interested, and his laugh was modulated and not
spontaneous. She had wondered that night, and frequently since then,
if, in the event of his asking her to marry him, which was possible,
and of her accepting him, which was also possible, whether she would
find him, in the closer knowledge of married life, as keen and
lighthearted with her as he had been with the French dancer. If he
would but trea