I was at her age, thought this lady, who, in
so thinking, flattered herself extraordinarily.

She shook her head. "For if you were, it would not do. Such things may
pass in London, they don't here. But to-morrow is Saturday, isn't it?
Yes, to-morrow is Saturday. At three I have an appointment with the
dentist. I'll telephone though. That always pains them and, where a
dentist is concerned, I do think turn about is fair play."

It was pleasantly said. To make it pleasanter, she stood up and added:
"Are you to sit here and read? There is a French book lying around
somewhere that belonged to your dear father. I don't remember who wrote
it and I have forgotten the title, but you are sure to like it. There! I
have it. It is called: 'L'art de tromper les femmes.'"

Mrs. Austen moved to the door and looked back.

"But if you don't find it readily, let it go for to-night. Your young
man is sure to have a copy. No nice young man is without one."

VI

Lennox was a broker, a vocation which he practised in Wall Street. Early
on the following afternoon, while returning from there, he sat wedged
between a gunman and a Hun. He was unconscious of either. The uncertain
market; the slump, momentarily undiscernible, but mathematically
inevitable; customers, credulous or sceptical, but always avid; the
pulse of the feverish street which the ticker indifferently registered;
the atmosphere of tobacco and greed; the trailing announcements; "Steel,
three-fourths; Pennsy, a half," these things were forgotten. The train
crashed on. Of that too he was unconscious.

Before him a panorama had unrolled--the day he first saw her, the hour
he first loved her, the moment he first thought she might care for
him--the usual panorama that unfolds before any one fortunate enough to
love and to be loved in return.

"Grand Central!"

The gunman disappeared, the Hun had gone, the car emptied itself on a
platform from which it was at once refilled. Lennox ascended the stair,
reached the street, boarded a taxi, drove to his home.

The latter, situated on the ground floor of an apartment house a step
from Park Avenue, was entirely commonplace, fitted with furniture large
and ugly, yet minutely relieved by a photograph which showed the almost
perfect oval of Margaret's almost perfect face.

The photograph stood on a table in the sitting-room beyond which
extended other rooms that, in addition to being ugly, were dark. But
Lennox had no degradi