He glanced at the clock in the car and noted that the hour was getting very late, and compunction seized upon him. Now that he had done the thing it suddenly seemed atrocious. He had ignored a lady in trouble and gone on a tangent. It wasn’t even the excuse of a previous engagement, or the plea of old friends. It was utterly unnecessary. He had followed an impulse and accepted an utter stranger’s invitation to dinner, and then had stayed all the evening, and gone back to wash dishes afterward. As he thought it over he felt that either he was crazy or a coward. Was it actually true that he, a man full grown, with a will of his own, was afraid to trust himself for an hour in the company of the woman who had once been supreme in his life? What was he afraid of? Not that he would yield to her wiles after two years absence; not that he would break his promise to himself and marry her in spite of husbands and laws either moral or judicial. It must be that he was afraid to have his own calm disturbed. He had been through seas of agony and reached a haven of peace where he could endure and even enjoy life, and he was so selfish that he wished to remain within that haven even though it meant a breach of courtesy, and an outraging of all his finer instincts. He forgot that his struggle earlier in the evening had been in an exactly opposite line, and that the finer feelings had urged him to remain away from the woman who had once been almost his undoing. However, now that it was almost too late to mend the matter he felt that he ought to have gone. Even if her plea of asking his advice had merely been a trumped-up excuse to bring him to her side, yet was it not the part of a gentleman to go? A true gentleman should never let a lady ask for help in vain. And he had promised always to be her friend. It might be that it had been an ill-advised promise, but a promise was a promise, etc. By that time he had arrived at his apartment and was hastening through a rapid evening toilet. The evening and its simple experiences seemed like a pleasant dream that waking obliterates. It might return later, but now the present was upon him, and he knew Evadne when she was kept waiting. If she had not changed there was no pleasant interview in store for him. However, he need not tell her that he had been enjoying himself all the evening and had forgotten how fast time was flying. Arrived at the hotel he went at once to the desk and asked for the lady. The clerk asked his name and called a bell-boy. “Go page Miss Chantry,” he said. “She’s in the ballroom.” Then turning to Maxwell, he said: “She left word you were to wait for her in the reception room over there.” “No, don’t page her,” said Maxwell sharply, “I’ll go and find her myself.” “Oh, all right! Just as you please! Those were her orders.”