h there was the poetry of a prison. Inside,
great folds of lace swept down in orderly cascades, as water trained to
fall mathematically. The colossal chandelier, gleaming like a Siamese
headdress, caught the subtle flashes from unknown places.

Hawker heard a step and the soft swishing of a woman's dress. He turned
toward the door swiftly, with a certain dramatic impulsiveness. But when
she entered the room he said, "How delighted I am to see you again!"

She had said, "Why, Mr. Hawker, it was so charming in you to come!"

It did not appear that Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The
girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social
receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally,
Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was a very good play.

"Did you?" she said in surprise. "I thought it much like the others."

"Well, so did I," he cried hastily--"the same figures moving around in
the mud of modern confusion. I really didn't intend to say that I liked
it. Fact is, meeting you rather moved me out of my mental track."

"Mental track?" she said. "I didn't know clever people had mental
tracks. I thought it was a privilege of the theologians."

"Who told you I was clever?" he demanded.

"Why," she said, opening her eyes wider, "nobody."

Hawker smiled and looked upon her with gratitude. "Of course, nobody.
There couldn't be such an idiot. I am sure you should be astonished to
learn that I believed such an imbecile existed. But----"

"Oh!" she said.

"But I think you might have spoken less bluntly."

"Well," she said, after wavering for a time, "you are clever, aren't
you?"

"Certainly," he answered reassuringly.

"Well, then?" she retorted, with triumph in her tone. And this
interrogation was apparently to her the final victorious argument.

At his discomfiture Hawker grinned.

"You haven't asked news of Stanley," he said. "Why don't you ask news of
Stanley?"

"Oh! and how was he?"

"The last I saw of him he stood down at the end of the pasture--the
pasture, you know--wagging his tail in blissful anticipation of an
invitation to come with me, and when it finally dawned upon him that he
was not to receive it, he turned and went back toward the house 'like a
man suddenly stricken with age,' as the story-tellers eloquently say.
Poor old dog!"

"And you left him?" she said reproachfully. Then she asked, "Do you
remember how he amused you playing with th