Six months ago, when she had left London, she had been so secure in his allegiance—an allegiance so settled, so taken for granted, that its first significance was almost lost sight of—that the separation had not given her a passing anxiety. Now she asked herself if his mad dash with the Gretrys across an ocean and a continent was to have brought him to her again merely to shake her faith in that allegiance. The slamming of the car door brought her back shrewdly to her surroundings. She looked up. In the pictures of her memory Longacre had figured always as a boy, a Viennese student as she had seen him first. Now the sight of him as he was, coming down the aisle upon her, struck her as freshly as the impression of a stranger. He was no longer youth, painted in full curves and raw colors, but young maturity grayed over, sharp-lined, strenuous with the vital endeavor he had put into living. He seemed to be catching up the years between them. She had a quick revulsion. She asked herself, if, after all— Cissy Fitz Hugh was yawning prettily, stretching herself awake. “We’ll be in in five minutes,” Longacre said, his hand on the back of Florence Essington’s chair. “Will you have your cloak?” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER II JULIA STEPS OUT OF IT, AND ANSWERS A QUESTION NIGHT had come down in a smother of fog made infinitely dreary by the interminable sound of the sea. The two light rigs that had sped on the sand road, through the thick oak shadows, now spun sharply over the crisp gravel of the ascending drive toward the “Miramar” lights, trembling in misty penumbra. The house loomed immediately above, huge, undefined, confused in its lesser masses of trees. It seemed so shut up against this dreary outside that it made not even a sign of welcome to the arrivals under the porte-cochère. Florence, as Longacre lifted her from the cart, felt the damp of his greatcoat chill through her glove. She saw him, mounting the wide wooden steps in the band of light from the veranda windows, haloed with silvery moisture. The veranda presented the appearance of a deck cleared for action. All the graces of hammocks and cushions, removed, left a sentinel row of reversed cane chairs against the wall. Somewhere out in the dark a tree dripped steadily. She felt her hair cling to her cheek. Cissy Fitz Hugh in her frills was limp as a wet doll, and prettily cross. “They must have heard us, with all that row on the gravel!” she fretted. “There—at last!” The door had opened, presenting them precipitately with the heart of the house—the big wainscoted living-hall, rugged, divaned, firelit, and full of people. They were not really more than a dozen, the women in golf-shirts, the men in shooting-coats and leggings—the flotsam and jetsam of a day’s sport made sociable with tea.