r been making
love to her, or indulging in the civilized equivalent of beating her; he
was curious to find out which. And having learned from his wife that
Rose was to sit beside him at the table, he made up his mind that he
would make her tell him.

He didn't attempt it, though, during his first talk with her--confined
himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for
polite conversation over the same hors-d'oeuvres and entrees, from one
dinner to the next, the season round. It wasn't until Eleanor had turned
the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game.

"No need asking you if you like this sort of thing," he said. "I would
like to know how you keep it up. You have the same things said to you
seven nights a week and you make the same answers--thrust and parry,
carte and tierce, buttons on the foils. It can't any of it get anywhere.
What's the attraction?"

"You can't get a rise out of me to-night," said Rose. "Not after what
I've been through to-day. Madame Greville's been talking to me. She
thinks American women are dreadful dubs,--or she would if she knew the
word--thinks we don't know our own game. Do you agree with her?"

"I'll tell you that," he said, "after you answer my question. What's the
attraction?"

"Don't you think it would be a mistake," said Rose, "for me to try to
analyze it? Suppose I did and found there wasn't any! You aren't
supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know."

"Is that what's the matter with Rodney?" he asked. "Is this sort of"--a
gesture with his head took in the table--"caramel diet, beginning to go
against his teeth?"

"He had to work to-night," Rose said. "He was awfully sorry he couldn't
come."

She smiled just a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by
a hair's breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply.

"Yes," he observed, "that's what we say. Sometimes it gets us off and
sometimes it doesn't."

"Well, it got him off to-night," she said. "He was pretty impressive. He
said there was a ruling decision against him and he had to make some
sort of distinction so that the decision wouldn't rule. Do you know what
that means? I don't."

"Why didn't you ask him?" Randolph wanted to know.

"I did and he said he could explain it, but that it would take a month.
So of course there wasn't time."

"I thought," said Randolph, "that he used to talk law to you by the
hour."

The button wasn't on t