"Oh, you here! How de do!" She slipped her hand under her escort's arm and sailed out with him. I caught the glint of the brass-bound door under the curtains. I don't know how long I stood staring before I started after her, to be met by the leaves of the revolving door which, reversing its motion, projected Sarah and Jerry into the palm room beside me. "I have been all over the café----" Sarah began. "Didn't you meet her?" "In the café? I was just telling you ..." "No, no. In the corridor, just now; they went through." "But they couldn't," urged Sarah. "I was standing at the door of the café with Jerry ..." The truth of the situation began to dawn on her. "There's such a crowd, of course you missed her." Jerry began to build up a probability by which we could sustain Sarah through the supper which followed. We all of us talked a great deal as people will when they are anxious not to talk of a particular thing. When we were in the dressing room again, putting on our wraps, Sarah turned on me. "She wasn't in the café at all," she declared. "I never said she was. I said she went through into the corridor." In the silence I could feel Cecelia dropping into the pit. "Did you know the man?" I nodded. "It was Henry Mills!" CHAPTER VI Before I had an opportunity to talk the incident over with Sarah, she had seen Cecelia. "She is perfectly furious with you," she reported. "She hasn't heard from Mr. Mills since, and she thinks it is on your account; that you have taken steps for breaking it off." "Well, if she admits there was something to break off ... I tell you, Sarah, you are fretting yourself to no purpose, the girl had been there before." "I'm afraid so." Sarah's taking it so much to heart was a credit to her, but I was more curious than commiserating. "Tell me, what is in the mind of a girl when she does things like that? What does she get out of it?" "Excitement, of course; the sense of being in the stir, and the feeling of being protected. She says Mr. Mills has been kind to her. It is odd, but she seems to think it is all right so long as it is going on; it is only when it is broken off she can't bear it. That is why she is so angry at you." "There might be something in that," I conceded. "When it is broken off she is able to realize how cheap and temporary it has been; while it is going on she can justify it on the ground that it is going on forever. That _would_ justify it, I suppose." I did not know how I knew this, but lately I had discovered in myself capacities for understanding a great many things of which I had had no experience. What concerned me was not Cecelia's relation to the incident. "Whatever am I going to do about going there again, to Pauline's, I mean?" "You can't tell!" "And I can't go there and not tell. I've got to choose between deceiving Pauline and condoning Henry, and I've no disposition to do either." Sarah thought it over.