outhampton girls,
with sea-blue eyes, and sunburned hair, who swim like seals, play
tennis like men, and fear nothing. Evelyn Gray was the name of this
particular one. I liked her immensely, and was not altogether sorry to
learn that she was to keep Lucy Fulton company until Fulton returned.

But it was a somewhat depressing dinner. There was an atmosphere in
the cheerful blue and white dining-room, the white panels of the doors
and wainscoting had a narrow border of blue, like impending fate.
Fulton, it seemed, had never yet been away from home over night. And
this was a record of devotion which he was very loath to break. Even
more loath to see it broken was Lucy Fulton.

"I tell him," she said, "that if he goes it will be the beginning of
the end." She spoke in jest, and although Fulton laughed back at her
you could see that what she had said troubled him and hurt him. "As a
matter of fact," she went on, "he's been looking for an excuse for some
time. And now he thinks he's found one, but it wouldn't pass in a
court of chivalry. He could _write_ to his old directors just as well
as not. Oh, you needn't think you're the only one who's going to have
a gay time. You needn't be surprised to hear that I, too, have left
home in the company of a dark and fascinating foreigner. And anyway I
shall give a dance and open all the champagne in the cellar."

"There are only two quarts and a pint," said Fulton, and he turned to
me. "_You've_ never been married, have you? So you don't know what
the modern woman can spend when she gets going, do you?"

I had a pretty good idea, but did not make the admission and continued
to look interrogative.

"Well," he said, smiling, "she just has to spend so much, she says so
herself. Then her poor husband's dividends are passed, and still she
has to spend so much; she just has to, she says so herself. Then her
poor husband's poor salary has to be cut in half, and she speaks calmly
of giving dances and opening wine. Evelyn, I count on you as an old
and tried friend. If necessary you will interpose your dead body
between Lucy and this dance of hers."

Superficially he was very tolerant and good-natured, but you could see
that beneath the surface, nerves were jumping, and that he was in that
condition of financial and perhaps mental embarrassment which causes
molehills to look like mountains. And it was here, and now, that I
learned something new about Lucy; that even in j