n
know something of _her_ antecedents. _She_ was Emily Carrol, also of
Rincon Hill, and of course he knew her two sisters--Mrs. Thomas Wynne
and Mrs. Edward Finch-Brown! As Stillman returned a smiling assurance to
Mrs. Robson's attempts to be impressive, a young woman in white arrived
with ice-cream and messy layer-cake. Unconsciously Claire Robson began
to smile. She could not have said why, but somehow the presence of Ned
Stillman and Mrs. Condor at a table spread with such vacuous delights
seemed little short of ridiculous. They did not fit the picture any more
than her beetle-browed, red-lipped Serbian who.... She turned
deliberately and swept the room with her glance. Of course he had gone.
It was not to be expected that _he_ would descend to the level of such
puerile feasting. A sudden contempt for everything that only an hour ago
seemed so desirable rose within her, and, in answer to the young woman's
query as to whether she preferred coffee to ice-cream, she answered with
lip-curling aloofness:

"Neither, thank you.... I am not hungry."

Stillman looked at her searchingly. She returned his gaze without
flinching.

Claire Robson did not sleep that night. She lay for hours, quite
motionless, staring into the gloom of her narrow bedroom, her mind
ruthlessly shaping formless, vague intuitions into definite convictions.
She could not put her finger upon the precise reason for her inquietude.
Was it chargeable to so trivial a circumstance as a stranger's formal
courtesy or had something more subtle moved her? If the depths of her
isolation had been thrown into too high relief by the almost shameful
sense of obligation she felt toward Stillman for his courtesy, what was
to be said of the uniqueness of the solitary position which the Serbian
awarded her by singling her out for a sympathetic response? Could it be
that a vague pity had stirred him, too? Had things reached a point where
her loneliness showed through the threadbare indifference of her glance?
In short, had both men been won to gallantry by her distress? In one
case, at least, she decided that there was a reasonable chance to doubt.
And that doubt quickened her pulse like May wine.

But the humiliation of her last encounter with chivalry stuck with
profound irritation. She recalled the scene again and again. She
remembered her contemptuous silence before Stillman's obvious suavities,
the high, assured laugh which his companion, Mrs. Condor, threw out to