blenz turned back, the flush warm to her face.

"Say, for an old friend I can be my own self."

"Can we break the receiving-line now, Lester honey, and go down with
everybody? The Sinsheimers and their crowd over there by themselves, we
ought to show we appreciate their coming."

Mr. Goldmark twisted high in his collar, cupping her small bare elbow in
his hand.

"That's what I say, lovey; let's break. Come, Mother Coblenz, let's step
down on high society's corns."

"Lester!"

"You and Selene go down with the crowd, Lester. I want to take gramaw to
rest for a while before we go home. The manager says we can have room
fifty-six by the elevator for her to rest in."

"Get her some newspapers, ma, and I brought her a wreath down to keep her
quiet. It's wrapped in her shawl."

Her skirts delicately lifted, Miss Coblenz stepped down off the dais. With
her cloud of gauze-scarf enveloping her, she was like a tulle-clouded
"Springtime," done in the key of Botticelli.

"Oop-si-lah, lovey-dovey!" said Mr. Goldmark, tilting her elbow for the
downward step.

"Oop-si-lay, dovey-lovey!" said Miss Coblenz, relaxing to the support.

Gathering up her plentiful skirts, Mrs. Coblenz stepped off, too, but back
toward the secluded chair beside the potted hydrangea. A fine line of pain,
like a cord tightening, was binding her head, and she put up two fingers to
each temple, pressing down the throb.

"Mrs. Coblenz, see what I got for you!" She turned, smiling. "You don't
look like you need salad and green ice-cream. You look like you needed what
I wanted--a cup of coffee."

"Aw, Mr. Haas--now where in the world--Aw, Mr. Haas!"

With a steaming cup outheld and carefully out of collision with the crowd,
Mr. Haas unflapped a napkin with his free hand, inserting his foot in the
rung of a chair and dragging it toward her.

"Now," he cried, "sit and watch me take care of you!"

There comes a tide in the affairs of men when the years lap softly, leaving
no particular inundations on the celebrated sands of time. Between forty
and fifty, that span of years which begin the first slight gradations from
the apex of life, the gray hair, upstanding like a thick-bristled brush off
Mr. Haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness
enhanced even the moving-over of a button. When Mr. Haas smiled, his
mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal
a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of carefu