d enjoy a continuation of it even less. He was glad
that Mr. Foster had happened along at this particular juncture. Excusing
himself briefly, he hurried off down the street.

Sally stood for a minute, watching him till he had disappeared round the
corner. She had a slightly regretful feeling that, now it was too late,
she would think of a whole lot more good things which it would have been
agreeable to say to him. And it had become obvious to her that Fillmore
was not getting nearly enough of that kind of thing said to him
nowadays. Then she dismissed him from her mind and turning to Gerald
Foster, slipped her arm through his.

"Well, Jerry, darling," she said. "What a shame you couldn't come to the
party. Tell me all about everything."

3

It was exactly two months since Sally had become engaged to Gerald
Foster; but so rigorously had they kept the secret that nobody at Mrs.
Meecher's so much as suspected it. To Sally, who all her life had hated
concealing things, secrecy of any kind was objectionable: but in this
matter Gerald had shown an odd streak almost of furtiveness in his
character. An announced engagement complicated life. People fussed about
you and bothered you. People either watched you or avoided you. Such
were his arguments, and Sally, who would have glossed over and found
excuses for a disposition on his part towards homicide or arson, put
them down to artistic sensitiveness. There is nobody so sensitive as
your artist, particularly if he be unsuccessful: and when an artist has
so little success that he cannot afford to make a home for the woman
he loves, his sensitiveness presumably becomes great indeed. Putting
herself in his place, Sally could see that a protracted engagement,
known by everybody, would be a standing advertisement of Gerald's
failure to make good: and she acquiesced in the policy of secrecy,
hoping that it would not last long. It seemed absurd to think of Gerald
as an unsuccessful man. He had in him, as the recent Fillmore had
perceived, something dynamic. He was one of those men of whom one could
predict that they would succeed very suddenly and rapidly--overnight, as
it were.

"The party," said Sally, "went off splendidly." They had passed the
boarding-house door, and were walking slowly down the street. "Everybody
enjoyed themselves, I think, even though Fillmore did his best to spoil
things by coming looking like an advertisement of What The Smart Men
Will Wear This S