almost to fascination with the neurotic
type), and to men of high intelligence, like Rodney, he was a boon and
a delight. And the people who liked him least were precisely those most
attracted by his wife. Anyhow, no one refused an invitation to their
dinners.

Rose's arrival at this one--a little late, to be sure, but not
scandalously--created a mild sensation. None of the other guests were
strangers, either, on whom she could have the effect of novelty. They
were the same crowd, pretty much, who had been encountering one another
all winter--dancing, dining and talking themselves into a state of
complete satiety with one another. They'd split up pretty soon and
branch out in different directions--the Florida east coast, California,
Virginia Hot Springs and so on, and so galvanize their interest in life
and in one another. At present they were approaching the lowest ebb.

But when Rose came into the drawing-room--in a wonderful gown that dared
much, and won the reward of daring--a gown she'd meant to hold in
reserve for a greater occasion, but had put on to-night because she had
felt somehow like especially pleasing Rodney--when she came in, she
reoxygenated the social atmosphere. She won a moment of complete
silence, and when the buzz of talk arose again, it was jerky--the
product of divided minds and unstable attentions.

She was, in fact, a stranger. Her voice had a bead on it which roused a
perfectly unreasoning physical excitement--the kind of bead which, in
singing, makes all the difference between a church choir and grand
opera. The glow they were accustomed to in her eyes, concentrated itself
into flashes, and the flush that so often, and so adorably, suffused her
face, burnt brighter now in her cheeks and left the rest pale.

And these were true indices of the change that had taken place within
her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd
walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an
intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had
found herself suddenly feeling lighter, older, indescribably more
confident. That dinner was to be gone through with, was it? Well, it
should be! They shouldn't suspect her humiliation or her hurt. She was
conscious suddenly of enormous reserves of power hitherto unsuspected--a
power that could be exercised to any extent she chose, according to her
will.

Her husband, James Randolph reflected, had evidently eithe