“Yes. Butter creams.”

“Last week it was the nut kind. One never knows. I should think you ought to standardize your tastes.”

“That would be stupid, wouldn’t it? It’s much more exciting to change.”

He went back to his work and forgot her. She was one of the butterflies who had flitted to Washington[32] during the war, and had set that conservative city by the ears in defiance of tradition.

[32]

It was these young women who had eaten their lunches within the sacred precincts of Lafayette Square, draping themselves on its statues at noon-time, and strewing its immaculate sward with broken boxes and bags, who had worn sheer and insufficient clothing, had motored under the moon and without a moon, unchaperoned, until morning, and had come through it all a little damaged, perhaps, as to ideals, but having made a definite impress on the life of the capital. The days of the cave-dwellers were dead. For better, for worse, the war-worker and the women of old Washington had been swept out together from a safe and snug harbor into the raging seas of social readjustment.

It was after office that Baldy carried the flowers to his car. He set the box on the back seat. In the hurry of the morning he had forgotten the rug which still lay where his fair passenger had stumbled over it. He picked it up and something dropped from its folds. It was the gray suede bag, half open, and showing the roll of bills. Beneath the roll of bills was a small sheer handkerchief, a vanity case with a pinch of powder and a wee puff, a new check-book—and, negligently at the very bottom, a ring—a ring of such enchantment that as it lay in Baldy’s hand, he doubted its reality. The hoop was of platinum, slender, yet strong enough to bear up a carved moonstone in a circle of diamonds.[33] The carving showed a delicate Psyche—with a butterfly on her shoulder. The diamonds blazed like small suns.

[33]

Inside the ring was an inscription—“Del to Edith—Forever.”

Del to Edith? Where had he seen those names? With a sudden flash of illumination, he dropped the ring back into the bag, stuffed the bag in his pocket, and made his way to a newsboy at the corner.

There it was in startling headlines: Edith Towne Disappears. Delafield Simms’ Yacht Said to Have Been Sighted Near Norfolk!

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