stockings. Her features were discomposed by emotion. Her hair deranged. She was not agreeable to contemplate. "Don't you dare!" she was gasping as Ulick entered. At once the action of the drama halted. Half-drunk, Paul stared at Ulick. He began babbling an excuse when he was violently shoved from the room and soon found himself in the hall. He didn't resist for he knew the grip of Ulick, saw his broad, deep chest, and was aware that the other was the stronger. "My chauffeur," he began, but was swiftly propelled to the street door. "You mean brute. Only because I don't want to make a scandal I'd kick you into the gutter. You cad. You rotter. Trying to assault a girl in my room--" "You want her for yourself," giggled Paul in drunken fashion. He was expelled without undue gentleness and staggered into the arms of his chauffeur. A minute later Ulick heard the honk of a horn as the machine sped toward Fifth Avenue. He returned to his room inwardly rejoicing that no one had witnessed the row. Easter lay sprawling, her hat crushed over her eyes, her arms helpless. She was asleep and slightly snoring. Her red face proclaimed a certain congestion. She's drunk, too, exclaimed Ulick. What should he do now? Summon Madame Felicé? No, not to be thought of. The Madame never demanded a wedding certificate, but in the matter of behaviour she was inflexible. A half-drunken man was looked upon as a matter of course; a drunken woman, however, was invited to leave the house after the first transgression. The Maison Felicé was eminently respectable, and, thriving hotel as it was, the police had never been called in because of a recalcitrant guest. Ulick remembered that. Nevertheless, he shivered. The snoring of the girl increased in volume and intensity. He lifted her head and put a pillow under it; he feared she would strangle with her head so pushed into her neck. He pulled down her dress, but noted the generous proportions of the young woman who in her stupour was at his mercy. But such a temptation never came to him. His rage was not yet appeased over the ungentlemanly tactics of a clubman, who took a defenceless girl out, got her drunk because of her inexperience, and then had the insolence to bring her into the apartment of another man and attempt to rape her. What else was it? She was, thanks to her condition, nearly overpowered when he had entered. Ulick became almost heroic in his own eyes. Rescued from the ravisher--that vulgar cad! But what was he going to do with the lady? She looked as if she expected to spend the night in his bed. A pretty mess, this. Then he heard her voice: