ir in his nostrils and the pleading of her
eyes within his sight--he, Charles Hardiman, might as well have held his
tongue.

So very likely it would have been. But when great matters are ripe for
decisions one way or the other, the little accident as often as not
decides. There was a hurrying of light feet in the corridor outside, a
swift, peremptory knocking upon the door. The same woman's voice called
in rather a shrill note through the panels! "Harry! Why don't you come?
We are waiting for you."

And in the sound of the voice there was not merely impatience, but a
note of ownership--very clear and definite; and hearing it Luttrell
hardened. He stood up straight. He had the aspect of a man in revolt.

CHAPTER II

AN ANTHEM INTERVENES

Upon the entrance of Hardiman's party a wrinkle was smoothed away from
the forehead of a _maitre d'hotel_.

"So! You have come!" he cried. "I began to despair."

"You have kept my table?" Sir Charles insisted.

"Yes, but with what an effort of diplomacy!"; and the _maitre d'hotel_
led his guests to the very edge of the great balcony. Here the table was
set endwise to the balustrade, commanding the crowded visitors, yet
taking the coolness of the night. Hardiman was contented with his choice
of its position. But when he saw his guests reading the cards which
assigned them their places, he was not so contented with the order of
their seating.

"If I had known an hour before!" he said to himself, and the astounding
idea crept into his mind that perhaps it was, after all, a waste to
spend so much time on the disposition of a dinner-table and the ordering
of food.

However, the harm was done now. There was Luttrell already seated at the
end against the balustrade. He had the noise of a Babel of tongues and
the glitter of a thousand lights upon his left hand; upon his right, the
stars burning bright in a cool gloom of deepest purple, and far below
the riding-lamps of the yachts tossing on the water like yellow flowers
in a garden; whilst next to him, midway between the fragrant darkness
and the hard glitter, revealing, as she always did, a kinship with each
of them, sat Stella Croyle.

"I should have separated them," Hardiman reflected uneasily as he raised
and drank his cocktail. "But how the deuce could I without making
everybody stare? This party wasn't got up to separate people. All the
same----"

The hushed wonder of a summer night. The gaiety of a bright thronged