She obeyed him, and looked inquiringly yet languidly. The angry man in him told him at once that she could obey because she was indifferent to his reasons for commanding her. Out of that indifference she stood and looked at him, kind, friendly, yet as far from him as the remoter stars. He stared at her and thought of brush and canvas. Never had he seen a woman so alive. Her eyes, her wayward hair, her very flesh seemed touched with flame. Her lips had softened into a full curve, strange contrast to their former patient sweetness. The pupils of her eyes, distended, gave her face a tragic power. As he gazed, that wild bright beauty seemed to fade. Her eyes lost their reminiscent look and inquired of him sanely. The lips tightened a little. Her languor gave place to a steady poise. Now she shook her head with a pretty motion, as if she cast off memories. "Do I look nice to-night?" she said kindly, as if she spoke to an admiring boy. "Do you want to paint me?" Peter turned aside with an exclamation under his breath. He had never, again he told himself, seen a woman so alive, so radiating beauty as if it bloomed and faded while he looked at her. She was beginning to mount the stairs. "Good-night," she called back to him, with her perfect kindliness. "Good-night, Peter." X Madam Fulton and Billy Stark sat in the library, wrangling. "I say she'll come," said Madam Fulton. "I say she won't," replied Billy with a hearty zest. "No woman of self-respect would." "Maybe she hasn't self-respect." "Oh, you go 'way, Florrie. Of course she has, any girl as pretty as that." Madam Fulton looked at him smilingly. There were few left, nowadays, to call her Florrie. "You see Electra never in the world would have invited her," she continued. "I simply did it, and she had to confirm it or appear like a brute. Electra won't do that. She's willing to appear like a long and symmetrical icicle, but not a brute." That was it. She had boldly asked Rose to luncheon, and then told Electra she had done it. Now it was fifteen minutes to the time, and the hostess had not appeared. Madam Fulton looked up from her work. There was a laughing cherub in each eye. Her work, let it be said, was no work at all, only a shuttle plying in and out mysteriously, and lyingly doing the deed known as tatting. She usually tied knots and had to begin over; still, as she said, she liked the motion. "There was a reporter here yesterday," she remarked, watching the effect on Billy. "The mischief there was! What for?" "To see me. To ask about the book." "You didn't talk to him?" "Oh, yes, I did!" "What did he ask you?" "Everything, nearly. He wanted to see the Abolitionist letters I had quoted." "What did you say?" "I refused. I told him they were sacred." "Did he suspect them? Was that his idea?" "Oh, dear, no! he wanted to reproduce some of the signatures. Then he asked me about my novels." "What about them?"