Mrs. Phillips indeed "had a room for him." She had rooms a-plenty. There was the chintz chamber on the third floor, where the Irish poet (who seemed not to expect very much for himself) had been put; and there was the larger, handsomer chamber on the second floor, where the Hindoo philosopher (who had loomed up big and important through a vague Oriental atmosphere) had been installed in state. It was a Louis Quinze room, and the bed had a kind of silken canopy and a great deal too much in the way of bolsters and lace coverings. It was thought that the Hindoo, judging from the report of the maid next morning, had been moved by some ascetic impulse to sleep not in the bed but on the floor beside it. This was the room now destined for Cope; surely one flight of stairs was enough. But there must be no further practice of asceticism,--least of all by a man who was really ill; so Mrs. Phillips, snatching a moment from her guests, herself saw the maid remove the lace pillow-shams and coverlet, and turn down the sheets, and set the thermos-bottle on the stand beside the reading lamp.... "Don't get up a moment earlier than you feel like doing," she said, at the door. "Breakfast----" "To-morrow is one of my busy days," replied Cope wanly. "Goldsmith, Sheridan...." "Well, we have other wage-workers in the house, you know. At seven-thirty, then, if you must." "Seven-thirty, if you please. Thank you." By the time Mrs. Phillips had returned to her guests, the first of the limousines was standing before the house; its wet top shone under an electric globe. Her own car, meanwhile, obdurately reposed in its garage. Presently a second limousine joined the first, and a third the second; and in another quarter of an hour her guests were well on their way to dispersal. She bade them all goodnight in the best of good humor. "You've never before had quite such an evening as this, I'm sure!" she said, with great gaiety. "Isn't it wonderful how she took it all!" said one lady to another, on the back seat of her car. "Anything like that would have thrown me off completely." The other lady laughed amusedly. She often found our Medora "great fun." Meanwhile, Cope, up stairs, was sinking deeper and deeper into his big, wide, overupholstered bed. And as his body sank, his spirit sank with it. He felt poor, unimportant, ill at ease. In especial, he felt greatly subordinated; he wished that he might have capitulated to a man. Then the mystery of handsome houses and of handsome furnishings came to harass him. Such things were everywhere: how were they got, how were they kept? Should he himself ever----? But no; nothing ahead for years, even in the most favorable of circumstances, save an assistant professorship, with its inconceivably modest emoluments....