ed
him, when he had growled out soft nothings to poetesses, paragraphists,
publicists, positivists, penny-a-liners, and other pale persons. 'Whom
shall it be?--Ashton! What have you done?'

The phonograph had been advertised to give a reproduction of Ternina in
the Liebestod from _Tristan und Isolde_, but instead it broke into the
'Washington Post,' and the room, braced to a great occasion, was
horrified. Mrs. Portway, abandoning Henry, ran to silence the disastrous
consequence of her husband's clumsiness. Henry, perhaps impelled by an
instinctive longing, gazed absently through the open door into the
passage, and there, with two other girls on a settee, he perceived
Geraldine! She smiled, rose, and came towards him. She looked
disconcertingly pretty; she was always at her best in the evening; and
she had such eyes to gaze on him.

'You here!' she murmured.

Ordinary words, but they were enveloped in layers of feeling, as a
child's simple gift may be wrapped in lovely tinted tissue-papers!

'She's the finest woman in the place,' he thought decisively. And he
said to her: 'Will you come down and have something to eat?'

'I can talk to _her_,' he reflected with satisfaction, as the faultless
young man handed them desired sandwiches in the supper-room. What he
meant was that she could talk to him; but men often make this mistake.

Before he had eaten half a sandwich, the period of time between that
night and the night at the Louvre had been absolutely blotted out. He
did not know why. He could think of no explanation. It merely was so.

She told him she had sold a sensational serial for a pound a thousand
words.

'Not a bad price--for me,' she added.

'Not half enough!' he exclaimed ardently.

Her eyes moistened. He thought what a shame it was that a creature like
her should be compelled to earn even a portion of her livelihood by
typewriting for Mark Snyder. The faultless young man unostentatiously
poured more wine into their glasses. No other guests happened to be in
the room....

'Ah, you're here!' It was the hostess, sniggering.

'You told me to bring someone down,' said Henry, who had no intention of
being outfaced now.

'We're just coming up,' Geraldine added.

'That's right!' said Mrs. Ashton Portway. 'A lot of people have gone,
and now that we shall be a little bit more intimate, I want to try that
new game. I don't think it's ever been played in London anywhere yet. I
saw it in the _New York He