s blue velvet, I am sure; but I will send the
card. Where does she live?"

Usselex bent over and touched her forehead with his lips. "That is good
of you," he said. "She will take it very kindly." And with that he moved
to the door.

"But what is the address?" Eden called after him.

"The Ranleigh," he answered; and from the hall he added, in a louder
tone, "I will be back in less than an hour."

"The Ranleigh," she repeated to herself. "The Ranleigh!" And then
suddenly the wall of the room parted like a curtain; to her ears came a
cry of violins, dominated and accentuated by a blare of brass. Mrs.
Manhattan was at her elbow. Behind her was Jones; beneath was a woman,
her face turned to hers. She caught the motion of Mrs. Manhattan's fan.
Beyond, in a canvas forest, stood a man, open-mouthed, raising and
lowering his right arm at regular intervals. And between the shiver of
violins and the shudder of trumpets, she heard some one saying, "Mrs.
Feverill, that is--rather fly. Stops at the Ranleigh." At once the music
swooned. The opera-house dissolved into mist, and Eden was in a
carriage, eying through the open window the cut of a passer's gown. In
her lap were some flowers; she raised them to her face, and as she put
them down again, a cab drove past, bearing her husband and the woman who
was considered fly. And this was the woman he wished her to receive! She
caught and pinioned her forehead in her hands. In the distance the
shadow of the afternoon loomed again, but this time more monstrous and
potent than before. And nearer and nearer it came--blacker than hate and
more appalling than shame; in a moment it would be on her; she would be
shrouded in it for evermore, and no defense--not one.

"No, no," she murmured. Her hands left her forehead. She clutched her
throat as though to tear some invisible grasp away. "No, no," she
murmured, "it cannot be."

"Look at me, Eden," some one was saying; "look at me; I love your eyes.
Youth is inconstant. It is with age--"

It was her husband reassuring her even in his absence. "Speak to me; I
love your voice." And memory, continuing its office of mercy, served as
aegis and exorcised advancing night. In her nervousness at the parried
attack, she left her seat and paced the room, the opals glittering on
her waist. "But he told me," she mused, "he told me that the woman's
husband was in trouble--that he was endeavoring to aid them both. What
did I hear when I first met him? The