essert was on the table now; for the story had taken longer in the
telling than the reading of it would require.

"Cartoner, help Netty to some grapes," said the host, "and take
some yourself. Story cannot interest you--must be ancient history.
Well--after all, it was with the recording angel that the Russian
government slipped up. For the recording angel gave the prison brat a
face that was historical. And if I get to Heaven, I hope to have a word
with that humorist. For an angel, he's uncommon playful. And the brat
met another private in the Cossack regiment who recognized the face,
and told him who he was. And the best of it is that the government has
weeded out the dangerous growth so carefully that there are not half
a dozen people in Poland, and none in Russia, who would recognize that
face if they saw it now."

Joseph poured out a glass of wine, which he drank with outstretched chin
and dogged eyes.

"Man's loose in Poland now," he added.

And that was the end of the story.

XIX

THE HIGH-WATER MARK

Netty did not smoke. She confessed to being rather an old-fashioned
person. Which is usually accounted to her for righteousness by men, who,
so far as women are concerned, are intensely conservative--such men, at
all events, whose opinion it is worth a woman's while to value.

Miss Mangles, on the other hand, made a point of smoking a cigarette
from time to time in public. There were two reasons. The ostensible
reason, which she gave freely when asked for it, and even without
the asking--namely, that she was not going to allow men to claim the
monopoly of tobacco. There was the other reason, which prompts so many
actions in these blatant times--the unconscious reason that, in going
counter to ancient prejudices respecting her sex, she showed contempt
for men, and meted out a bitter punishment to the entire race for having
consistently and steadily displayed a complete indifference to herself.

Miss Mangles announced her intention of smoking a cigarette this
evening, upon which Netty rose and said that if they were not long over
their tobacco they would find her in the drawing-room.

The Mangles' salon was separated from the dining-room by Joseph's
apartment--a simple apartment in no way made beautiful by his Spartan
articles of dress and toilet. The drawing-room was at the end of the
passage, and there was a gas-jet at each corner of the corridor. Netty
went to the drawing-room, but stopped short on