As Moira seated herself at one of the tables she was conscious of a fashionable party across the room. Such people were not unusual in Sophie’s and she paid little attention to them. She saw the handsome proprietress in the open pantry at the back of the room and waved to her with a cry of greeting. Sophie replied by calling her name. Immediately afterward, Moira looked up to see a man coming toward her from the group she had spotted upon entering. He reached her table and thrust out his hand. “Well, Rob Blaydon!” she cried. “Moira.” She had recognized him at once, but she looked him over more carefully as he sat down opposite her. He was stouter. She found herself experiencing a sensation she had never known before, that of meeting a youthful companion grown mature in her absence, one she was fond of. It wasn’t such an extraordinary sensation. It might have been only a few days ago when she was seeing Rob constantly. Nothing happened to people at all. Perhaps his face had changed a little, but whatever change there was she would have expected. Yes, she felt he was an even more wicked and human Rob than before. “I’ll tell you what, Moira,” he went on at once. “I don’t care what you’ve got on hand to-night, you’ve got to spend the evening with me. If you will wait just a minute I’ll get away from these people on some pretext. I’ve simply got to talk to you, Moira. What do you say?” “Go ahead, Rob, if you want to. I’d love it,” she replied with unaffected pleasure. He came back in a few moments. “Evidently they are used to your whims,” she said. “They don’t seem to mind.” “Forget ’em,” he replied, with a clipped ruthlessness she remembered well. The two women had in fact glanced at her curiously and critically, but she did not care. They were certainly a very smart party. She wondered what they would think if they knew that she, too, not so many years ago, had worn the clothes they were wearing and cultivated their dry, sophisticated smiles. It appeared to her now a diluted and uninteresting sophistication.... “Moira,” he was saying, “I’ve got to know all about you. I’m hungry for information. You don’t look any younger. But you don’t look any the worse, either. What wouldn’t they give back home to be with me now!” “Rob, it’s good to see you!” “Honest? Well, I’m certainly glad you feel that way. Still, I always knew you’d be just the same. Why did you do it, Moira? Why in the devil did you do it?” “Do what?” “Oh, all that--rot. It was silly, Moira. You’re one of us, to this day. Always will be, you know. Who cared?” She laughed a few notes of warm laughter that was still a clear stream free from the sediment of bitterness. “I never think of that any more. Perhaps it was silly. But I’ve been happier.” “H’m.” She was conscious that his eyes searched her face, and rather proud that what he found there would make it impossible to pity her. “H’m,” he repeated, “well, maybe you have. I guess you know a lot.”