Enid floated to her place at the piano, where she postured and shook her flaxen halo in vain. Mr. Walter was not disposed to lean over her to-night. He sat gazing at a herd of fluffy sheep framed in hard gold which was suspended over Matilda’s head. Miss Slattery glared at her over the flapping pages of a woman’s magazine. Mrs. Kelsey inspected her through her lorgnette. They both left the room. After strumming fruitlessly on the piano for awhile, Enid whirled and murmured something about being bored and drifted out, leaving a faint odour of lilies of the valley. Matilda sank into a silence so absolute that even the brook-like garrulity of the loquacious Goodwillie could not weather it, and so he, too, rose and left. It was nine-thirty. She and Eugene Walter avoided looking at each other. It was as if they wordlessly conspired to rid themselves of the others and now that they were alone it was meet and proper they should sit there in a moment’s decent silence and not gloat. He advanced finally and stood in front of her, his eyes still on the white animals huddled under a white storm. “I wonder,” and he did not succeed in making his voice casual, “why artists paint sheep? Inane things.” “Isn’t that the trouble with everything?” asked Matilda heavily. “That gown isn’t inane. It’s gorgeous.” And he gave her a direct look. “I was so sick of that old serge,” she said weakly, drawing the veil about her shoulders a shade more tightly. He sat down beside her and gave the veil a little pull which exposed one shoulder. It glistened in the light like marble and made her feel like a Diana submitting to the brazen teasing of a satyr. “You’ve no right ...” she murmured. “You’ve no right to cover up such eburnean loveliness,” he whispered. Eburnean? What was that? Her whole being wondered what it meant and it thrilled her because she did not know. “Take that funereal rag off,” he said pettishly twitching the veil. “I feel funereal,” she said, despondent once more at his touch. “Why?” he asked, his hand barely touching her knee. “Because I’ve been in Chicago a whole week and nothing has happened.” “Doesn’t eating dinner in the presence of a novelist thrill you?” “It did at first,” she admitted ruefully. “Well, you thrill me in that gown. You’re epical.” Matilda gasped. He talked like a book. She became suddenly oblivious to Eugene Walter’s Adam’s apple, his pasty pallor, and the clamminess of his fingers as they caressed her elbow. She glowed under his elaborate infatuation and told him everything. More than everything.