inched-in as to waist, and
puffed-out as to trousers, his cheeks red with the cold, his brown eyes
bright with eagerness, Ralph Witherspoon stood on the threshold.

"Of all the good luck," he said, "to find you in."

She shook hands with him and sat down.

"I thought you had gone back to Bay Shore. You said yesterday you were
going."

"I got my orders in the nick of time. We are to go to Key West. I am
to join the others on the way down."

"How soon?"

He sat at the other end of the davenport. "In three days, and anything
can happen in three days."

He moved closer. She had a sense of panic. Was he going to propose to
her again, in this room which she had set aside so sacredly for Derry
Drake?

"Won't you have some tea?" she asked, desperately. "I'll have Julia
bring it in."

"I'd rather talk."

But she had it brought, and Julia, wheeling in the tea-cart, offered a
moment's reprieve. And Ralph ate the Lady-bread-and-butter, and the
little pound cakes with the nuts and white frosting which had been
meant for Derry, and then he walked around the tea-cart and took her
hand, and for the seventh time since he had met her he asked her to
marry him.

"But I don't love you." She was almost in tears.

"You don't know what love is--I'll teach you."

"I don't want to be taught."

"You don't know what it means to be taught--"

Jean had a stifling sense as of some great green tree bending down to
crush her. She put out her hand to push it away.

In the silence a bell whirred--.

Derry Drake, ushered in by Julia, saw the room in the rosy glow of the
lamp. He saw Ralph Witherspoon towering insolently in his aviator's
green. He saw Jean, blushing and perturbed. The scene struck cold
against the heat of his anticipation.

He sat down in one of the rose-colored chairs, and Julia brought more
tea for him, more Lady-bread-and-butter, more pound cakes with nuts and
frosting.

Ralph was frankly curious. He was also frankly jealous. He was aware
that Derry had met Jean for the first time at his mother's dinner
dance. And Derry's millions were formidable. It did not occur to
Ralph that Derry, without his millions, was formidable. Ralph's idea
of a man's attractiveness for women was founded on his belief in their
admiration of good looks, and their liking for the possession of, as he
would himself have expressed it, "plenty of pep" and "go." From
Ralph's point of view Derry Drake was not handsome, a