Mentally, he fortified himself against the appearance of Anne Wellington, who, in truth, merited this precaution as she stepped past him with a slight nod and went down the stairs. She was not a bit overdone--Jack admitted that at once--and yet, how different she was from the girl in the shirtwaist suit and black hat, whom he had seen entering the sight-seeing barge the previous day, or who swathed in his navy coat, his hat pushed down over her eyes, had stood with him on the bridge of the _D'Estang_! She was all in white, slim, supple, without jewelry, save for a string of pearls about her neck. A light, filmy veil was thrown across her bare shoulders and the living curls and waves of her flawless coiffure gleamed as they caught the lights of the chandeliers. And yet--! The girlishness which Jack had found so attractive in her, was missing, and so was the characteristic animation of her features. Instead, her face was set in a formal, politely interested expression, which to Armitage seemed to change her entire personality. Yesterday she was radiant, light-hearted, impulsive, and thoroughly lovable. To-night, she was, so to say, a professional beauty, "rigged and trigged" for competition; one of a set whose ambitions, apparently, coveted no triumphs more exalted than those to be gained here, who rated artificiality as a fine art and appraised life upon the basis of standards which even the casual observer would hardly pronounce either moral or exalted. [Illustration: To-night she was a professional beauty, "rigged and trigged" for competition.] As Armitage followed her graceful course to the side of her parents, he groaned, half humorously, and then went wandering about the upper hallway, a prey to conflicting emotions, engendered by the new point of view which the girl had unconsciously presented. A couplet of Browning's was running through his mind and more than once he found himself muttering the words: "Oh, the little more and how much it is, And the little less and what worlds away."