“I'm afraid it will do no good,” she admitted; “but I'll try.” She realized that he was about to kiss her and moved quickly back. “I am almost afraid of you,” he told her; “you're so distant and elegant. Judith and Pansy would get on with you first rate. I'll telephone tomorrow, in the afternoon. If the last flowers I sent you came I never heard of it.” She thanked him appropriately for the roses and stood, erect and impersonal, as a man in the hotel livery helped him into a coat. Mr. Moses Feldt waved the still unlighted cigar at her and disappeared through the rotating door to the street. She gave a half-affected sigh of relief. Couldn't he see that her mother would never marry him. At the same time the strange thrill touched her; the sense of his absurdity vanished and she no longer remembered him perched like a painted rubber ball on the edge of the lounge. In the somber red plush and varnished wood of the reception-room of their suite he seemed again charming. Perhaps it was because he, too, adored her mother. That wasn't the reason. The familiar rare joy lingered. It seemed now as though she were to capture and understand it ... there was the vibration of music; and then, as always, she felt at once sad and brave. But, in spite of her old effort to the contrary, the feeling died away. Some day it would be clear to her; in the meanwhile Mr. Moses Feldt became once more only ridiculous. VIII In the morning she was dressed and had returned from breakfast before her mother stirred. The latter moved sharply, brought an arm up over her head, and swore. It was a long while before she got up or spoke again, and Linda never remembered her in a worse temper. When, finally, she came into the room where the breakfast-tray was laid, Linda was inexpressibly shocked--all that her mother had dreaded about her appearance had come disastrously true. Her face was hung with shadows like smudges of dirt and her eyes were netted with lines. Examining the dishes with distaste she told Linda that positively she could slap her for letting them bring up orange-juice. “How often must I explain to you that it freezes my fingers.” Linda replied that she had repeated this in the breakfast-room and perhaps they had the wrong order. Neither her mother nor she said anything more until Mrs. Condon had finished her coffee and started a second cigarette. Then Linda related something of Mr. Moses Feldt's call on the evening before. “He cried right into his handkerchief,” she said, “until I thought I should sink.”