r a twelve-month. She had come and gone,
eaten and fasted, danced and driven, with no other result than the
discovery that the companionship of her husband was better than anything
else. To her thinking he needed only an incentive to conquer the
ballot. There was no reason why he should not leave Wall Street for
broader spheres. She had met senators by the dozen, and he was wiser
than them all. He might be Treasurer of State if he so willed, or
failing that, minister to the Court of St. James. Even an inferior
mission such as that to the Hague or to Brussels would be better than
the Street. It was inane, she told herself, to pass one's life in going
down town and coming up again merely that another million might be put
aside. An existence such as that might be alluring to Jerolomon or
Bleecker Bleecker, but for her husband there were other summits to be
scaled.

And as Eden, prettily flushed by the possibilities which her imagination
disclosed spectacular-wise for her own delight, sat companioned by
fancies, determining, if incentive were necessary, that incentive should
come from her, the portiere was drawn aside and the butler announced Mr.
Arnswald.

"I ventured to come in," he said, apologetically, "although I knew Mr.
Usselex was not at home. I wanted----"

"One might have thought your evenings were otherwise occupied," Eden
interrupted, a little fiercely. The intercepted note of the preceding
evening rankled still. That the young man should receive a letter from a
strange woman was, she admitted to herself, a matter which did not
concern her in the slightest. But it was impertinent on his part to
suffer that letter to be sent to him at her house.

"This evening, however, as you see----" he began blandly enough, but
Eden interrupted him again.

"What did you think of it last night?" she asked, with the
inappositeness that was peculiar to her.

"You are clairvoyant enough, Mrs. Usselex, to know untold what I
thought. It was of that I wished to speak to you. It is rare that such
an opportunity is given me."

"To hear Wagner?"

"No, not to hear Wagner particularly." He hesitated and looked down at
his pointed shoes, and at the moment Eden for the life of her could not
help thinking of a dissolute young god arrayed in modern guise. After
all, she reflected, it is probably the woman's fault.

"No, not that," he continued, and looked up at her again, his polar-eyes
ablaze with unexpected auroras. "Not that; b