estion, he learned from Lord Hubert that
Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset's company; an
announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Bry, after a
glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a
spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet
his friends at dinner that evening--"At Becassin's--a little dinner to
the Duchess," she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the
pressure.

Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought
him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused
to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace.
There, while the Brys hovered within over the last agitating alternatives
of the MENU, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length
rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skiddaw
and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss
Bart on the pretext of a moment's glance into one of the brilliant shops
along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the
white dazzle of a jeweller's window: "I stopped over to see you--to beg
of you to leave the yacht."

The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. "To
leave--? What do you mean? What has happened?"

"Nothing. But if anything should, why be in the way of it?"

The glare from the jeweller's window, deepening the pallour of her face,
gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. "Nothing
will, I am sure; but while there's even a doubt left, how can you think I
would leave Bertha?"

The words rang out on a note of contempt--was it possibly of contempt for
himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of
insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest: "You have yourself
to think of, you know--" to which, with a strange fall of sadness in her
voice, she answered, meeting his eyes: "If you knew how little difference
that makes!"

"Oh, well, nothing WILL happen," he said, more for his own reassurance
than for hers; and "Nothing, nothing, of course!" she valiantly assented,
as they turned to overtake their companions.

In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Bry's
illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the
familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife once
more presenting their customary faces t