s eyes came around to Helene, and with a quick
smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a
mood, he brought himself back to the present.

"With time and patience," he said, as he sat down, "anybody can get a
grip on a personality, but a mighty impersonality is like the Deluge
or--or a steam-roller. Do I look flattened out?"

"You do, rather, for you," said Helene. "Tell me about it from the
beginning." And Leighton did. It took him half an hour. When he got
through, she said, still smiling, "I'd like to meet this Folly person."

"I see I've talked for nothing," said Leighton. "It isn't the Folly
person that flattened me out. It's what's around her, outside of her."

"That's what you think," said Helene. "But, still, it's she I'd like to
see."

"That's lucky," said Leighton, "because you 're going to."

"When?"

"To-morrow. Lunch."

"What's the idea?"

"The idea is this. I've been looking her up, viewing her cradle and her
mother's cradle and that sort of thing. I'd have liked to have viewed
her father's as well, but it's a case of _cherchez l'homme_."

"Well?"

"Well, the young lady's an emanation from sub-Cockneydom. My idea is
that that kind can't stand the table and _grande-dame_ test. I'll supply
the table, with fixtures, and you're going to be the _grande-dame_."
Leighton's face suddenly became boyishly pleading. "Will you, Helene?
It's more than an imposition to ask; it's an impertinence."

For a moment Helene was serious and looked it.

"Glen," she said, "you and I don't have to ask that sort of thing--not
with each other. We take it. Of course I'll come. I'll enjoy it. But--do
you think she's really raw enough to give herself away?"

"I don't know," said Leighton, gloomily. "I couldn't think of anything
else. Lunch begins to look a bit thin for the job. At first I'd thought
of one of those green-eyed Barbadian cocktails, followed by that
pale-eyed Swiss wine of mine that Ivory calls the Amber Witch with the
hidden punch. But I've given them up. You see, I told her I'd play fair
if she did."

"Yes, I see," said Helene.

A psychologist would have liked an hour to study the lightning change
that came over Folly when, on the following day, she suddenly realized
Lady Derl. Folly had blown into the flat like a bit of gay thistledown.
For her, to lunch with one man was the stop this side of boredom; but to
lunch with two was a delight. If she was allowed to pick the othe