ere beginning to be faintly visible through the
ivory flesh. Then he looked at her sharpened face and saw that the three
little wrinkles were stamped indelibly between her eyebrows. As he
watched her she lifted her head with the babyish tilt he had first seen
under cherry-coloured ribbons. "I will find the money to send you to
Florida," he said slowly, "if you will promise me--to give up drugs."

She gathered her wraps about her and made a movement as if to leave the
room. "Drugs! Why, how ridiculous!" she exclaimed with a laugh, though
he felt the cold edge of hatred in her voice.

Still laughing, she went out and up the staircase, and a few minutes
afterwards he heard her nervous step in the room above. He took out the
bills again and spent half the night in the effort to realise the exact
amount of his indebtedness.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH A LIE IS THE BETTER PART OF TRUTH

At breakfast Connie did not appear--she had seemed to be asleep when he
went into his dressing-room--and it was not until one o'clock that he
had a chance to speak to her again. Luncheon was already on the table
when he entered the dining-room, and Connie, in a green velvet gown and
a little green velvet hat ornamented by a twinkling aigrette, was
standing by the window looking out restlessly at the falling snow. As he
came in she went over to the table and began making tea with nervous
hands. She was apparently in the highest spirits, and while she fumbled
noisily with the cups and saucers she rambled on in her expressionless
voice with tinkling interludes of her shrill, falsetto laughter. As he
watched her in shamed silence he remembered with astonishment that it
had taken him almost ten years to find out that Connie was vulgar. Now
at last his eyes were opened--he had achieved a standard of comparison
and he felt her commonness with an awakening of his literary instinct,
quite as acutely, he told himself, as he should have felt it had she
been presented to him in the form of a printed page. The sense of
remoteness, of strangeness, grew upon him at each instant; he realised
the uselessness of his good intentions toward her--the utter
impossibility of snatching her or any human creature from the clutch of
temperament.

Her day was filled with engagements, she told him at the end of luncheon
when she rose to hurry off while he still lingered over his coffee; "and
I shan't be here to dine, either," she added, as an after thought. "Gus