arranged about these rooms,
there were certain properties that went with them--the lady next door
who plays Paderewski's 'Minuet' six hours a day, and K. here, and
Reginald. If you must take something to the woods, why not the minuet
person?"

Howe was a good-looking man, thin, smooth-shaven, aggressively well
dressed. This Sunday afternoon, in a cutaway coat and high hat, with
an English malacca stick, he was just a little out of the picture. The
Street said that he was "wild," and that to get into the Country Club
set Christine was losing more than she was gaining.

Christine had stepped out on the balcony, and was speaking to K. just
inside.

"It's rather a queer way to live, of course," she said. "But Palmer is a
pauper, practically. We are going to take our meals at home for a while.
You see, certain things that we want we can't have if we take a house--a
car, for instance. We'll need one for running out to the Country Club to
dinner. Of course, unless father gives me one for a wedding present, it
will be a cheap one. And we're getting the Rosenfeld boy to drive it.
He's crazy about machinery, and he'll come for practically nothing."

K. had never known a married couple to take two rooms and go to the
bride's mother's for meals in order to keep a car. He looked faintly
dazed. Also, certain sophistries of his former world about a cheap
chauffeur being costly in the end rose in his mind and were carefully
suppressed.

"You'll find a car a great comfort, I'm sure," he said politely.

Christine considered K. rather distinguished. She liked his graying hair
and steady eyes, and insisted on considering his shabbiness a pose. She
was conscious that she made a pretty picture in the French window, and
preened herself like a bright bird.

"You'll come out with us now and then, I hope."

"Thank you."

"Isn't it odd to think that we are going to be practically one family!"

"Odd, but very pleasant."

He caught the flash of Christine's smile, and smiled back. Christine was
glad she had decided to take the rooms, glad that K. lived there. This
thing of marriage being the end of all things was absurd. A married
woman should have men friends; they kept her up. She would take him to
the Country Club. The women would be mad to know him. How clean-cut his
profile was!

Across the Street, the Rosenfeld boy had stopped by Dr. Wilson's car,
and was eyeing it with the cool, appraising glance of the street
boy whose sole k