eless good-nature,
and quite irresistible, though very Roman.

"I don't believe in hurried negatives," she said. "That sounds like a
solemn photographer laying down the law, doesn't it? But I don't. I'll
give you till Sunday to think it quietly over. Write and let me know on
Sunday. Till then I'll keep one of the best cabins open for you. No
berths, all beds! Myself, Charmian Mansfield, Susan Fleet, Max Elliot,
Paul Lane, and you--I still hope. Good-bye! Thank you for being kind to
me. I love to be well received. I'm a horribly sensitive woman, really,
though I don't look it. I curl up at a touch, or because I don't get
one!"

Claude tried to reiterate that he could not possibly get away, but
something in the expression of her eyes made him feel that to do so just
then would be to play the child, or, worse, the fool to this woman of
the world. As she got into her motor she said:

"A note on Sunday. Don't forget!"

The machine purred. He saw a hand in a white glove carelessly waved. She
was gone. The light of that other world faded; its murmurs died down. He
went back to his studio. He sat down at the piano. He played; he tried
to excite himself. The effort was vain. A sort of horror of the shut-in
life had suddenly come upon him, of the life of the brain, or of the
spirit, or of both, which he had been living, if not with content at
least with ardor--a stronger thing than content. He felt unmanly,
absurd. All sense of personal dignity and masculine self-satisfaction
had fled from him. He was furious with himself for being so sensitive.
Why should he care, even for half an hour, what Mrs. Shiffney thought
of him? But there was within him--and he knew it--a surely weak
inclination to give people what they wanted, or expected of him, when he
was, or had just been, with them. Strangely enough it lay in his nature
side by side with an obstinate determination to do what he chose, to be
what he intended to be. These badly-assorted companions fought and kept
him restless. They prevented him from working now. And at last he left
the piano, put on hat and coat, and started for a walk in the evening
darkness.

He felt less irritated, even happier, when he was out in the air.

How persistent Mrs. Shiffney had been! He still felt flattered by her
persistence, not because he was a snob and was aware of her influential
position and great social popularity, but because he was a young unknown
man, and she had troops of friends, b