Here, then, were two women who had it in for Eva. Winnie purred that it was not as if Eva had been starved for love; and laughed riotously, and administered a visual dig to her own husband. What can be expected of the husband of a jealous wife, besides a certain hint of duplicity? In the case of Addis Wickersham, this tinge of deceit was so blended with the suggestion thrown out by his sonorous voice, which rolled like an organ and, like an organ, seemed always to be accompanying the praise of God, that the impression left upon the listener was that of a man who was all but grandly noble. He might have been a great biographer; but he talked it out, he talked himself out, he talked not only his own ideas but the world itself into a frazzle from which nothing could be salvaged. His one passion was talk--his talk. He gave the impression of listening to his words with rapture; and his joy in the achievements of his larynx was so intense that in its glow his approbation of the content of his remarks dropped out of sight. He intoned. For minutes after he had lapsed into mute satisfaction the room would vibrate with the sound waves he had released. He said: “I was deeply gratified to see that Eva’s last book received from London the enthusiastic praise that we in New York had already given it.” He considered himself the discoverer of Eva Litchfield and dragged in New York from the kindness of his heart. Winnie was at once torn between her intense admiration of the show he made and her desire to shout at him “How dare you praise a beautiful woman?” But there was present at the bar another discoverer of Eva Litchfield. Spencer Mapes rested his saturnine dark face on his extraordinarily long and thin hand and laughed at Addis. Molly wanted to know for what date the next discovery of genius in New York was scheduled: and yawned, and laughed at both of them. Leaning on the rail of the bar, she was so slender that her backward droop was almost a contortion. A stranger slid along to stand beside her, holding on to the rail and facing her with a childlike eager appraisal. “My dear lady,” remarked this gentleman, “I never saw you before, and I haven’t the least idea who you are, but I feel sure you’re famous. I came down here because I was told that I’d see all the famous people. Damn it!” shouted the stranger, no longer able to restrain his disappointment, “I insist that you’re famous! And if you ain’t, then show me one of ’em? I came down here to look at celebrated persons. Show me the celebrated persons, will you, my good creature?” I judged that he had decided that none of us came up to his dream.