"Oh, Mrs. Judson," and this time Ruth spoke with decision, "in time we shall learn to know our fellow guests perhaps. Tonight let us talk about things--not people;" and with a power rare in so young and inexperienced a person, she kept the talk from again wandering to personalities or to sentimentalities. Ryder ignored the suggestion of any more wine, and the widow finally bethought her of the fact that the lights might go out soon and leave her in the dark. So the little supper party broke up. Almost everybody else had left the room save a young woman whom Ryder had noticed before--a plainly dressed, freckled, sharp-featured girl, who ate alone at a table near the door. That is, she was supposed to eat; but in reality she read most diligently a rather dingy paper covered pamphlet that was folded into small compass beside her plate. As Ryder and his party passed out he saw the girl devouring the story she was reading with a mouthful from her plate poised on her fork. So eager was she over the book, and so excited, that she gestured with this mouthful, jabbing the fork to and fro as though duelling with an imaginary enemy and feeling within herself, without doubt, all the emotions of the characters in the fiction she was perusing. Mrs. Judson, now in a very happy state, indented Ryder's ribs with an irritating thumb, and whispered shrilly: "Do you know who she is?" "I haven't the pleasure of the young lady's acquaintance." "She's the house detective," giggled the heavy lady. "Isn't she funny? She's reading a five-cent detective thriller. She gave me a pile of them to read once. She says--he, he!--they feed the imagination." Ryder looked back at the plain-featured girl. She was still waving the mouthful on her fork, wrapped in her novel, as he and the two women of his party went on to the elevator. He left Ruth and Mrs. Judson to go up in that while he went for a final conference with George and the steward before retiring himself. The porters had fixed the bracket lamps in the main corridors of the hotel (and there were none too many) while one was at the clerk's desk and was already lighted. "Back to the days of our grandfathers," said George, grinning. "'The light of other days.' Say! some of these fellows, Mr. Ryder, are frothing at the mouth about you." "I thought Colonel Brack----" "Not him. The old boy's been taken off to his own room by his wife. That lady is of the salt of the earth, and she knows just how to handle Aurelius. She's been handling him for a good many years. He's nowhere near such a 'howling wolf' in his own coral as he appears outside. "But some of the others----" He halted, for Jimson, the man with the invalid wife, suddenly appeared in a glow of indignation, and George let him speak for himself.