But even here she could not escape Joan’s echoes. As Anne joined the group, Charlie Frye was saying, “... wonderful! Of course, she knows, just as we all know, that it’s she young Enderly went off his head over. She goes on with it all, though. Entertains us. It’s magnificent of her, I think. But she’s pale to-night....” Anne gripped Ariel’s hand hard and cried with stifled violence, “Merely a matter of leaving off rouge! Very effective too,”—and wanted to bite her tongue out when she had said it. Michael Schwankovsky looked at her, whether disgusted or quizzically she didn’t know. _Or care!_ Charlie Frye bit his lips to keep an angry retort back, and frowned at the floor. But Ariel threw an arm about Anne’s shoulder, and Anne felt that she was trembling in unison with her. The long windows leading onto the terraced rose-garden were open throughout dinner. Candlelight, moonlight, rose scents and the glowing colors of the other women’s evening frocks were all mingled for Ariel in a web of sensuous pleasure which mixed with a mind almost as anguished as her friend Anne’s. Schwankovsky occupied the head of the table, where he played host spectacularly, with a noisy zeal. Ariel, in whose honor the party had been planned, was given the place of honor at his right. Mrs. Weyman was opposite Ariel at his other side. Glenn on Ariel’s right remembered poignantly the first meal she had had with them, how she had been as silent as now, but with a different silence. Then she had bent with the flow of talk as forget-me-nots bent in a grassy stream, flowing with it, not obstructing it. But to-night she was withdrawn, on purpose. And she looked often at Anne, Glenn noticed, with a tender, watchful regard. Why, Glenn could not imagine, for Anne by this time was entering into everything exuberantly, as she had promised him and herself she would. Charlie Frye, quite over his earlier irritation with her, was merry as a grig. Anne was flirting with him, a little clumsily, perhaps, but effectively, if one judged from the man’s reactions. What Glenn did not notice, but Ariel did, was that Anne, on the evening when Joan Nevin had left off her rouge, had painted her own face most brilliantly. The talk flowed on. Chatter about summer plans, their own and other people’s. Gossip about Doctor Steiner who had just been given a degree by conservative Harvard. Would he go to make his home in Vienna next year, as he was threatening, or stay to enrich America with his knowledge and genius? Some desultory discussions, too, of music, plays, books and painting.