er the event. His
nature, slow moving or overcontrolled, bore him past the real moment of
offense without explosion; but with the crisis over, his resentment
began to gain in strength and to grow more bitter as the opportunity for
action receded more and more into the past. Crane knew now that Tucker
was reviewing every phrase that had passed between them; every injury,
real or fancied, that he had ever received at Crane's hands; these he
was summoning like a sort of phantom army to fight on his side. No,
Tucker was not a guest from whom any host could expect much genial
interchange that evening.

Reed, on the other hand, was too unconscious. Placid, good-natured,
confident in his own powers to arrange any little domestic difficulties
that might have arisen, he sat down, unfolded his napkin, and turned to
Lefferts in answer to the inquiry about real estate which Lefferts had
just tactfully addressed to him.

"The great charm of this section of the country," he was saying, "is
that from the time of its earliest settlement it has been in the hands
of a small group of--" At this instant Jane-Ellen entered with the soup.
Reed, who had expected to see Smithfield, stopped short, and stared at
her with an astonishment he did not even attempt to disguise. Lefferts,
following the direction of his eyes and seeing Jane-Ellen for the first
time, mistook the subject of Reed's surprise.

"Oh," he said, as the girl left the room, "is this 'the face that
launched a thousand ships'?"

Tucker, who was perhaps not as familiar with the Elizabethan dramatists
as he should have been, replied shortly that this was the cook.

"A very beautiful little person," said Lefferts, imagining, poor fellow,
that he was now on safe ground.

"I own," said Tucker, "that I have never been able to take much interest
in the personal appearance of servants."

"You sometimes behave as if you did, Tuck," remarked his host.

"If you are interested in beauty," observed Lefferts, "I don't see how
you can eliminate any of its manifestations, particularly according to
social classes."

"Such a preoccupation with beauty strikes me as decadent," answered
Tucker crossly.

"Indeed, how delightful," Lefferts replied. "What, exactly, is your
definition of 'decadent'?"

Now in Tucker's vocabulary the word "decadent" was a hate word. It
signified nothing definite, except that he disliked the person to whose
opinions he applied it. He had several others of the s