or two. I’ve—I’ve been practising all afternoon.”

She eluded the lady’s outstretched arms and clung temporarily at her father’s breast.

“Dad,” she confessed brokenly, “I think I must have been a little bit loony these last two weeks. But, dad, I’ve taken the cure. It’s not nice medicine and it makes you feel miserable at first but I guess it’s good for what ails me.... Dad, have you seen—him?”

“Not yet.” Compassion for her was mixed in with his own secret exultation, as though he tasted a sweet cake that was iced with a most bitter icing.

“Well, when you do, you’ll understand. Even if he doesn’t!”

“Have you told him?”

“Of course I have. Did you think I’d try to wish that little job off on you? I didn’t tell him the real reason—I couldn’t wound him that much. I told him I’d changed. But he—he’s really the one that’s changed. That’s what makes it harder for me now. That’s what makes it hurt so.”

“Here, Romola,” he said, kissing the girl and relinquishing her into her mother’s grasp. “You swap tears awhile—you’ll enjoy that anyhow, Romola. I’ve got business downstairs—got to make some sleeper reservations for getting out of here in the morning. And as soon as we hit Pittsburgh I figure you two had better be booking up for a little swing around Europe.”

The lobby below was seething—seething is the word commonly used in this connection so we might as well do so, too—was seething with Easterners who mainly had dressed as they imagined Westerners would dress, and with Westerners who mainly had dressed as they imagined Easterners would dress, the resultant effect being that nobody was fooled but everybody was pleased. Working his way through the jam on the search for a certain one, Mr. Gatling’s eye almost immediately was caught by a startling color combination or rather a series of startling color combinations appertaining to an individual who stood half hidden by a column, leaning against it, head down, with his back to Mr. Gatling.

To begin at the top, there was, surmounting all, a smug undersized object of head-gear—at least, it would pass for head-gear—of a poisonous mustard shade. It perched high and, as it were, aloof upon the crest of its wearer’s skull. Below it, where the neck had been shaved, and a good portion of the close-clipped scalp as well, showed a sort of crescent of pink skin blazing forth in strong contrast to the abnormally long expanse of sunburnt 

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