The first thing he noticed as he went up the steps of the piazza was Willoughby sleeping in the warm afternoon sun. Then he was aware of the sound of a victrola playing dance music. The hall-door stood wide open; he looked in. Smithfield and Jane-Ellen were dancing. Though no dancer himself, Crane had never been aware of any prejudice on the subject; indeed, he had sometimes thought that those who protested were more dangerously suggestive than the dances themselves. But now he felt a wave of protest sweep over him; the closeness, the identity of intention, seemed to him an intolerable form of intimacy. The two were quite unconscious of his presence, and he stood there for several minutes, stood there, indeed, until Jane-Ellen's hair fell down and she had to stop to rearrange it. She looked very pretty as she stood panting and putting it up again, but she exerted no attraction upon Crane. Disgust, he thought, was all he now felt. One did not, after all, as he told himself, enter into competition with one's own butler. He went quietly away, ordered a horse and went for a long ride. A man not very easily moved emotionally, he had never experienced the sensation of jealousy, and he now supposed himself to have reached as calm a judgment as any in his life. Everything he had ever heard to Jane-Ellen's discredit, every intimation of Tucker's, every sneer of Mrs. Falkener's, came back to him now. He would like to have sent for her and in the most scathing terms told her what he thought of her--an interview which he imagined as very different from his former reproof. But he decided it would be simpler and more dignified never to notice her in any way again. On this decision he at last turned his horse's head homeward. Smithfield let him in, as calm and imperturbable as ever. "Your afternoon been satisfactory, Smithfield?" inquired his employer. Smithfield stared. "I beg pardon, sir?" "Have you succeeded in finding a boy to replace Brindlebury?" The butler's face cleared. "Oh, yes, I believe I have--not a boy, exactly, quite an elderly man, but one who promises to do, sir." "Good." Crane turned away, but the man followed him. "Miss Falkener asked me to tell you when you came in, sir, that she would be glad of a word with you. She's in your office." Crane stood absolutely still for a second or two, and as he stood, his jaw slowly set, as he took a resolution. Then he opened the door of his office and went in. Two personalities sometimes advance to a meeting with intentions as opposite as those of two trains on a single track. Crane and Cora were both too much absorbed in their own aims to observe the signals of the other. "Cora," began Crane, with all the solemnity of which the two syllables were capable. "Oh, Burton," cried the girl, "why did you leave Mr. Eliot's like that? It has worried me so much. Did anything happen to annoy you? What was it?" "I sent the car right back for you." "It wasn't the car I wanted."