the middle
of the room with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply
cushioned and scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with
surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow
and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his
hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly
planted in the insidious depths of one of Violet Melrose's white leopard
skins.

"Susy!" he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured: "You
didn't know, then? You hadn't heard of his masterpieces?"

In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. "Is Nat your genius?"

Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.

Fulmer laughed. "No; I'm Grace's. But Mrs. Melrose has been our
Providence, and...."

"Providence?" his hostess interrupted. "Don't talk as if you were at
a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most
fabulous success. He's come abroad to make studies for the decoration of
my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow has given him her garden-house
at Roslyn to do. And Mrs. Bockheimer's ball-room--oh, Fulmer, where are
the cartoons?" She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on
a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. "I'd got as far
as Brindisi. I've travelled day and night to be here to meet him," she
declared. "But, you darling," and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,
"I'm forgetting to ask if you've had tea?"

An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself
mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element.
Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then
nourished on another air, the air of Nick's presence and personality;
now that she was abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt
herself suddenly at the mercy of the influences from which she thought
she had escaped.

In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled, it
seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have tossed Nat
Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the
ends of the earth to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose
belonged to the class of moral parasites; for in that strange world the
parts were sometimes reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper.
Wherever there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet
appeared, a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the
notoriety which a