appetizer for the solid things before him.

Only Olive heard his comment. As a matter of course, Dolph's place was
next to Olive. Long since, discerning hostesses had discovered that
therein lay the only path to peace. Otherwise, Dolph either sulked
palpably; or else ignored his other neighbour and shouted all his talk
across the table into Olive's ears. Not that either Dolph or Olive had
any notion of being at all in love with each other. It was merely that
things struck them the same way at the same instant, and that Dolph,
being young and a good deal spoiled, could see no reason against a
prompt exchange of comments on the fact. Therefore, for the peace of
the other people at the table, it had become a universal local law
that, no matter who took Olive Keltridge out, Dolph Dennison should be
placed at her other side.

Olive, then, heard Dolph's comment and, what was infinitely worse, she
feared the novelist had heard it, too. Therefore, to save the feelings
of the bald little man, she flung herself into the talk.

"I see exactly what you mean," she told him. "Your idea is that, when
you have conceived a character that is wholly original--"

"Ahem!" Dolph strangled suddenly.

But Olive continued, without pause for flinching, for now the bald
little novelist was facing her intently, and it was plain, from the
tentative waggling of his beard, that he would mount his hobby and be
off again, if she gave him so much as a comma's breadth by which to
creep back into the talk.

"Wholly original," she repeated sternly; "that it must be very trying
to be obliged to descend to the every day of things, and name her
Mamie."

There came a peal of laughter at the accent with which Olive had
contrived to endow the name. The peal was cut short, however, by the
fussy accent of the little novelist.

"You have hit the nail on the head, Miss Olive, distinctly on the
head," he assured her, with a bow and smile so suave as to be devoid of
meaning. "Really," and Olive felt as if she were a young child and he
were offering her a stick of candy; "it was a very smart little tap.
Yes, as you say, a Mamie is an anticlimax to one's best endeavours.
Now, if all the ladies," Olive had a momentary longing to hurl a plate
in his unctuous direction; "only were blessed with names like yours, we
poor novelists would never be devoid of sources for our inspiration."

"Encore!" remarked Dolph Dennison, with admirable gravity.

Once again Olive