r a hardly-needed
reassurance that the episode looked to him, as it had looked to her,
trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh, for his look gave her just
what she wanted, she sat up and slid her arms around his neck.

"How plumb ridiculous it would have been," she said, "if either of us
had married anybody else."

If Rodney, that is, had married a girl who'd have taken Bertram Willis
seriously; or if she had married a man capable of thinking the
architect's attentions important.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST QUESTION AND AN ANSWER TO IT

But within a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon
table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question
propounded itself to her. Why had it infuriated him so--why had he
glared at her with that air of astounded incredulity, on discovering
that she wasn't prepared to take him seriously? There could be only one
answer to that question. He could not have expected Rose to be properly
impressed and fluttered, unless that were the effect he was in the habit
of producing on other women. These others, much older that Rose all of
them (because no debutantes were ever invited to belong to the
_hareem_), these new, brilliant, sophisticated friends her marriage with
Rodney had brought her, did not, evidently, regard the dapper little
architect with feelings anything like the mild, faintly contemptuous
mirth that he had roused so spontaneously and irresistibly in Rose.
Every one of them had a husband of her own, hadn't she? And they were
happily married, too. Well, then ...!

She found Violet Williamson in Frederica's box at the Symphony concert
one Friday afternoon, and took them both home to tea with her afterward.
And when the talk fairly got going, she tossed her problem about Bertie
Willis and his _hareem_ into the vortex to see what would come of it.

It was always easy to talk with Frederica and Violet, there was so much
real affection under the amusement they freely expressed over her youth
and inexperience and simplicity. They always laughed at her, but they
came over and hugged her afterward.

"I'm turned out of the _hareem_," she said, apropos of the mention of
him, "in disgrace."

Violet wanted to know whatever in the world she had done to him.
"Because, he's been positively--what do you call it?--dithyrambic about
you for the last three months."

"I laughed," Rose acknowledged; "in the wrong place of course."

The two older women