he rented an
apartment, many-roomed and expensive, with a man-servant in charge, and
furnished it in styles and periods ranging through all the Louis. The
living room was mostly rose color. It was like an unhealthy and bloated
boudoir. And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight
of this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned luxury
of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naive indulgence of
long-starved senses, and there was in it a great resemblance to the
rolling-eyed ecstasy of a school-boy smacking his lips over an all-day
sucker.

The War went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll in--a
flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on shopping bent, entered
a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on Michigan Avenue. Exclusive,
that is, in price. Eva's weakness, you may remember, was hats. She was
seeking a hat now. She described what she sought with a languid
conciseness, and stood looking about her after the saleswoman had
vanished in quest of it. The room was becomingly rose-illumined and
somewhat dim, so that some minutes had passed before she realized that a
man seated on a raspberry brocade settee not five feet away--a man with
a walking stick, and yellow gloves, and tan spats, and a check suit--was
her brother Jo. From him Eva's wild-eyed glance leaped to the woman who
was trying on hats before one of the many long mirrors. She was seated,
and a saleswoman was exclaiming discreetly at her elbow.

Eva turned sharply and encountered her own saleswoman returning,
hat-laden. "Not to-day," she gasped. "I'm feeling ill. Suddenly." And
almost ran from the room.

That evening she told Stell, relating her news in that telephone
pidgin-English devised by every family of married sisters as protection
against the neighbors and Central. Translated, it ran thus:

"He looked straight at me. My dear, I thought I'd die! But at least he
had sense enough not to speak. She was one of those limp, willowy
creatures with the greediest eyes that she tried to keep softened to a
baby stare, and couldn't, she was so crazy to get her hands on those
hats. I saw it all in one awful minute. You know the way I do. I suppose
some people would call her pretty. I don't. And her color! Well! And the
most expensive-looking hats. Aigrettes, and paradise, and feathers. Not
one of them under seventy-five. Isn't it disgusting! At his age! Suppose
Ethel had been with me!"

The next time it wa