building, half inclined not to enter; to go, instead, to a telephone and excuse himself for desertion on some pretext.

It was too late. Already the door was held open for him by a footman whose discreetly familiar smile Adriance saw, and resented. He winced again when the elevator boy stopped at the Mastersons' floor without being told, implying the impossibility of Mr. Adriance's call being intended for any other household. He never had noticed these things before; now, he felt himself disgracefully exposed before these black men.

He was altogether in a mood of bitter exasperation when he was ushered into Mrs. Masterson's little drawing-room. He recognized this condition with a vague sense of surprise at himself underlying the dominant emotion. All his life he had been singularly even-tempered. Now he combated a wish to say ugly, caustic things to the woman who had brought him here. He did not want to see her.

Yet she was very pleasant to see. Indeed, both the scene and his hostess were charming, as they met his view. Mrs. Masterson was standing before a long mirror, surveying herself, so that Adriance saw her twice; once in fact, and once as a reflection. Sunlight filled the room, which was furnished and draped in a curious shade of deep blue with a shimmering richness of color, so that the lady's gray-clad figure stood out in clear and precise detail. But Mrs. Masterson could bear that strong light, and knew it. Without turning, she smiled into the mirror toward the man whose image she saw there."How do you like the last Viennese fancy, Tony?" she composedly greeted him. Her voice was not one of her good points. It was naturally too high-pitched and harsh, and although by careful training she had accustomed herself to speak with a suppressed evenness of tone that smothered the defect to most ears, there resulted a lack of expression or modulation perilously near monotony. 

Adriance listened now, with a fresh sense of irritation, to the fault he only had observed recently. Before answering, he surveyed critically the decided lines of the costume offered for his approval; its audacious little waistcoat of cerise-and-black checked velvet, the diminutive hat that seemed to have alighted like a butterfly on the shining yellow hair brushed smoothly back from Mrs. Masterson's pink ears, and the high-buttoned gray boots with a silk tassel pendant at each ankle. Those exquisite and costly boots taunted him with their sharp contrast to those he had studied an hour before; they spurred him on to rudeness as if actual rowels were affixed to their little French heels. 

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