dusting his stairs, heavily breasted nurses, mothers, wives at their petty accounts--he ended abruptly a mental period escaping from the bounds of propriety. What he meant, all that he meant, was that beauty should be the main consideration. Lee applied himself to far different values; and, before he had finished, lunch was ready.

"I have been thinking half the morning about Claire and Peyton," Fanny told him; "I do feel that we exaggerated the situation last night; it all seemed more immediate, bigger, than it will turn out. Heavens, as you said, they can't do anything, nothing can happen."

He was still inclined to believe that. "There is a tremendous lot of talk and no result; yes--no one really does a thing. They want to, and that's all it comes to."

Fanny cast a glance of repressed attention at him across a lower center-piece. "If you could be whatever you wanted, what and where, what would you choose?" she asked.

"Here, with you and the children," his voice replied without hesitation. The youth of her expression was happily stained by a flush. He meant it, Lee told himself sharply. But about Peyton--

"Of course, he was drunk last night, and he said nothing conclusive; he was only wretchedly unhappy--wished he had been killed in the war and all the romantic rest."

"It is too much for me," Fanny decided generally; "but I am glad that I was young when I was; being alive was quite simple then. I am comparatively young, Lee, 'way under forty--well, two years--but you can't realize how things have changed in such a short while. The women we knew didn't even smoke then. Wasn't it only five or six years ago they were first allowed to in nice cafés? And, not simply that, men didn't, either, when they were with us. We used to go to Cape May; they called the dances hops; and do you, oh, do you, remember the bathing suits?"

"I am not so certain about any great change," he objected. "I seem to recall--"

"Horrid people will always be horrid!" she exclaimed. "I knew one or two very fast girls; but they were different about it from now, it was only whispered around and condemned, and it's shouted out today. I wish I had known you sooner; I would have done a lot better than your mother. I'd like to have had you, Lee, as a little boy; but I suppose you're enough that yet."

His opposition to Fanny's maternal manner, directed at him, was stronger than customary; she seemed to accept in herself every responsibility for him; as though, whenever his actions were unfortunate, it had been due to her imperfect control. With practically no experience of life, guarded from its threatening aspects, her attitude was that, not without patience, she brought him with relative safety through a maze in which otherwise he'd be lost. This was evident now in what he felt to be the complacency of her voice and expression; and a perverse impulse grew in him to combat and shatter her blind satisfaction. Lee subdued this, in the merest decency; but the effort left him thoroughly irritated. He found, finally, an outlet for his annoyance in the restlessness of Helena; and he ordered her from the table.

This show of paternal discipline Fanny met with lowered eyes and a silence that endured until Gregory had walked sedately from the room; then she reminded Lee that he must never, absolutely never, correct his children when he was in an ill temper.

"That's nonsense," he returned shortly; "you ought to see that because it's impossible. Even theoretically I don't agree with you--a child can understand a punishment in which there is some warmth. You are dealing with a little animal and not a reasonable being." To this Fanny replied that her children were not animals.

"Really, Fanny, you don't know what you are talking about," he asserted; "we are all, men and women and children and giraffes, animals. You might look that up in the dictionary."

"I haven't any need to," she observed, with a calmness that further tried him. "If the dictionary says that it isn't a very good one. And if you are trying to tell me that Helena and Gregory are no better than giraffes you're sillier than usual."

"That isn't in the least what I said," Lee retorted, with widely separated words. "I wasn't speaking of the comparative but of the absolute. It is a fact that we are animals, more responsible and with greater powers than the others, but animals, animals."

"Then what is an animal?" Fanny demanded.

"A mammal."

A marked expression of distaste invaded her. "It has a nasty sound," she admitted with her instinctive recoiling from life. "I don't see how we got on this subject anyhow, it's too much like sex. It seems you are able to discuss nothing else."

"It is only nasty in your mind," he declared.

"That's exactly like you, you all over, to blame things on me. It's convenient, I must say, but not fair nor true: it was you who got in a wicked temper and sent Helena, who was feeling miserable, away."

"You always say the children are sick when they misbehave."

"I wish I could be as sure of you as I was of that," she answered quickly; "for instance, when you go out in automobiles at the dances with women."

"Now, we are beginning," he told her with emphasis; "we never had an argument that didn't degenerate into this; and I'm sick of it."

"I thought I was the one who was sick of it," Fanny complained; "I wonder that I don't just let you go."

"I wish you would," he said, rising; "I give you my word, I'd rather be damned comfortably than have this endless trouble." In a position of unassailable quiet behind his papers he told himself that the scene with Fanny had been particularly vain because, underneath, he agreed with her opinion about the casual expression of small emotions; he no longer wanted it any more than she did. Yes, at last they were one there. And yet he felt further from her even than before--whatever his marriage hadn't satisfied, that he had stilled in minor ways, was now without check. The truth was that it had increased, become more serious, insistent.

The tangible facts, the letters and memoranda, before him, retreated and came back to his consciousness. Tobacco worms had been boring through his cigars, and destroyed a third of the box. Helena passed, affecting a grievance out of any proportion to its cause in him. Outside, the country was flooded with a deceptive golden radiance; and he remembered, suddenly, that Alice Lucian had told him to bring Fanny to the Club and a tea that afternoon, which she was giving for Mina Raff. He repeated this to his wife, in a conciliatory regret at his forgetfulness; and she replied that if he cared to go she would come over later for him in the car. Lee, standing at a window, thought he wouldn't; but, adding that Peyton would be there, he decided that, in view of the possible developments, his presence might be wise.

* * * * *

The early gloom gathered familiarly in the long main room of the clubhouse; the fire cast out fanwise and undependable flickering light upon the relaxed figures; it shone on tea cups, sparkled in rich translucent preserves, and glimmered through a glass sugar bowl. It was all, practically, Lee Randon reflected, as it had been before and would be again. How few things, out of a worldful, the ordinary individual saw, saw--that was--to comprehend, to experience: a limited number of interiors, certain roads and streets, fields and views. He made his way through life blinded to the customary and unaware of the strange; summer was hot and winter, usually, cold; the spring became green under rain; winds blew and the leaves fell in fall--of how much more was he conscious?

It was the same with regard to people; he, Lee Randon, knew a great many, or rather, he could repeat their names, recognize their superficial features at sight. But to say that he actually knew them-- that was nonsense! Why, he was almost totally ignorant of himself. How much could he explain of Fanny's late state of mind? She had done all that was possible to make it clear to him; with little result. Fanny was an extraordinarily honest person; or, damn it, she seemed to be. He had a reputation for truthfulness; but how much of what was in his mind would he admit to his wife? The discrepancy between what he appeared and what he felt himself to be, what he thought and what published, was enormous, astounding.

There, as well, was Peyton Morris; Lee would have sworn that he understood him thoroughly--a character as simple, as obvious as Fanny's. But here was Morris seated with Mina Raff on the stairs to the upper floor, beyond the radius of the fire; and, though they were not ten feet away, he could not hear a word of what they were saying. At intervals there was an indistinct murmur, nothing more. Claire, at Lee Randon's side, was sitting with her chin high and a gaze concentrated on the twisting flames: talking generally had fallen into a pause.

The door from without opened, Fanny entered, and there was a momentary revival of animation. "Is Lee here?" she demanded; "but I know he is. The fire is just as attractive at home, yet, even with nothing to do, he'll hardly wait to give it a poke. Where's Peyton?"

"On the stairs," someone answered casually.

There was a movement, and Mina Raff approached. "It's so hot here," she asserted.

"It is warmer out," Fanny informed her; "I wonder what the weather is in New York?"

"I can't say, I'm sure; but I shall discover tomorrow morning. I have to be back as early as possible. Then--work, work, work."

"Mina has been made a star," Peyton Morris announced. But he stopped awkwardly, apparently conscious of the warmth, the largeness, in his voice. Fanny whispered to Lee that it was quite too outrageous. In return, he asked, "What?" and, indignant, she drew away from him.

The conversation died again. Lee Randon could see Mina Raff's profile, held darkly against the glow; her lips and chin were firm. "Where," Anette asked her, "shall you stay when you get back--at Savina Grove's?" No, Mina replied, her hours would be too long and uncertain to allow that; probably she would be at the Plaza. Lee had heard the Groves' name mentioned before in connection with Mina Raff; and he made