Returning over the familiar road, in his small closed car, he was quieter mentally, critical of his useless dissatisfaction; he was making needless trouble for himself. Small things filled his thoughts, among them the question of how much gin would be consumed by the cocktail party Fanny and he were having before the dinner dance at the Country Club. Peyton and Claire Morris, Anette and, if she came, Mina Raff, with two men, and the Lucians. Perhaps twelve in all; two quarts. The Country Club dances, principally made up of people who had known each other long and intimately, decidedly needed an impetus; society was rather dreadful without rum. Anette was an attractive girl; she had beautiful legs; but they were hardly better than Fanny's; why in the name of God was he captivated by Anette's casual ankles and indifferent to his wife's? Women's legs--they were even no longer hidden--were only a reasonable anatomical provision exactly shared by men. Why, he particularized, did he prefer them in silk stockings rather than bare, and in black more than bright colors? Anette's had never failed to excite his imagination, but Alice Lucian's, graceful enough, were without interest for him. How stupid was the spectacle of women in tights! Short bathing skirts left him cold, but the unexpected, the casual, the vagaries of fashion and the wind, were unfailingly potential. Humiliating, he thought, a curiosity that should be left with the fresh experience of youth; but it wasn't--comic opera with its choruses and the burlesque stage were principally the extravagances of middle age. * * * * * The orange juice and square bottles of clear gin, the array of glasses and ice-filled pewter pitcher in which Lee mixed his drinks, were standing conveniently on a table in the small reception room. Fanny, in a lavender dress with a very full skirt decorated with erratically placed pale yellow flowers, had everything in readiness. “Mina Raff came,” she announced, as he descended the stairs. “Anette telephoned. To be quite frank I didn't much care whether she did or didn't. She used to be too stiff, too selfish, I thought; and I never liked Anette.” “Nothing but prejudice, that,” he replied decidedly. “Anette has a very good head. You have just heard stories from envious women.” He was careful to say nothing about her legs. “I haven't found her the least bit out of the way; and she thinks a lot of you.” “Bosh,” Fanny said inattentively; “I know what she thinks of me. I am surprised, Lee, that you do so well, because really you are nothing but an impressionable old fool.” She touched him affectionately on the cheek, “But I can take care of you and Anette too.”