nna, darling."

Simultaneously the two men raised the biscuits to their lips, nibbled
tentatively. Simultaneously they tried to change the subject. But
Roxanne undeceived, set down the pan and seized a biscuit. After a
second her comment rang out with lugubrious finality:

"Absolutely bum!"

"Really----"

"Why, I didn't notice----"

Roxanne roared.

"Oh, I'm useless," she cried laughing. "Turn me out, Jeffrey--I'm a
parasite; I'm no goal----"

Jeffrey put his arm around her.

"Darling, I'll eat your biscuits."

"They're beautiful, anyway," insisted Roxanne.

"They're-they're decorative," suggested Harry.

Jeffrey took him up wildly.

"That's the word. They're decorative; they're masterpieces. We'll use
them."

He rushed to the kitchen and returned with a hammer and a handful of
nails.

"We'll use them, by golly, Roxanne! We'll make a frieze out of them."

"Don't!" wailed Roxanne. "Our beautiful house."

"Never mind. We're going to have the library repapered in October.
Don't you remember?"

"Well----"

Bang! The first biscuit was impaled to the wall, where it quivered for
a moment like a live thing.

Bang!...

When Roxanne returned, with a second round of cocktails the biscuits
were in a perpendicular row, twelve of them, like a collection of
primitive spear-heads.

"Roxanne," exclaimed Jeffrey, "you're an artist! Cook?--nonsense! You
shall illustrate my books!"

During dinner the twilight faltered into dusk, and later it was a
starry dark outside, filled and permeated with the frail gorgeousness
of Roxanne's white dress and her tremulous, low laugh.

--Such a little girl she is, thought Harry. Not as old as Kitty.

He compared the two. Kitty--nervous without being sensitive,
temperamental without temperament, a woman who seemed to flit and
never light--and Roxanne, who was as young as spring night, and summed
up in her own adolescent laughter.

--A good match for Jeffrey, he thought again. Two very young people,
the sort who'll stay very young until they suddenly find themselves
old.

Harry thought these things between his constant thoughts about Kitty,
He was depressed about Kitty. It seemed to him that she was well
enough to come back to Chicago and bring his little son. He was
thinking vaguely of Kitty when he said good-night to his friend's wife
and his friend at the foot of the stairs.

"You're our first real house guest," called Roxanne after him. "Aren't
you thrilled and p