her accustomed seat, just as Stephen Langdon and the lawyer, Melvin, entered it.

All this had passed so quickly that the interval it occupied could be reckoned only by seconds. Beatrice Brunswick's face was flushed, and her eyes were alight with mischief, or with something deeper, as she greeted the two gentlemen. Duncan's countenance was like marble; he realized that the mess was bigger now, by far, than it had been before.

Langdon and his lawyer perceived nothing unusual in the attitude of any person in the box; both were preoccupied with the discussion upon which they had just been engaged. Patricia's eyes were already fixed on the stage, and evidently her entire attention was devoted to it. She appeared to have forgotten the propinquity of other persons.

There was a vacant chair beside her which Duncan should have taken, and, doubtless, he would have done so, had not the lawyer stupidly preëmpted it for his own use. The banker occupied the middle chair, and the consequence was that Duncan was given no choice, but was literally forced into the one next to Beatrice. Not that he would have preferred it otherwise, at the moment. Not he. He was angered by Patricia's conduct toward him; he resented the whole circumstance—and possibly, too, he still felt something of the thrill induced by the clinging arms of Beatrice Brunswick. He stared silently toward the stage, seeing nothing upon it. He was endeavoring to arrange, in some comprehensive form, the combination of circumstances and scenes which it had been his misfortune to encounter, and in part enact, since noon that day. But the more he tried, the more difficult became the task. The whole thing was as exasperating as an attempt to put together, within an alloted time, a puzzle-picture which has been cut into all sorts of sizes and shapes. It was not a panorama of events, as he recounted them in his own mind; it was a kaleidoscope, a jumble of colors and figures, of angles and spaces—or to put it in his own words, it was literally a mess.

He turned toward Beatrice, whose right hand was negligently waving a fan. He reached out and claimed it, and she did not resent the act. He drew it toward him, and she looked up and smiled into his eyes with an expression he did not understand. She made no effort to withdraw her hand, nor any attempt to resist his advances. He bent nearer.

"Will you do it?" he asked her, whispering. "Will you do it, Beatrice?"

She made no reply, and he bent still nearer, seizing her hand in both 

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