"You get into bed, deary... I must fix my hair. Sheets are nice and clean, see. I always have clean sheets on my bed... Maybe you'll come to see me often now. Safer, I'm tellin' ye to go to one girl steady. You know what you're gettin' then... Pretty, ain't it, this chimmy? Got it at Filene's in the bargain basement..." He was standing against the door crumpling his felt hat in his hands. He tried to speak; no words came. She was naked sitting on the edge of the bed under the gas jet, eyes wide and mocking; her breasts hung free as she leaned towards him. In his head was a ghastly sniggering. He was out the door. She grabbed him by the wrist. "No, you don't. I've had them kind before ... just want to peek an' run. Gimme somethin' or I'll raise the roof, you low-down sonofabitch of a cheap skate you." "Here, take that, it's all I've got." He piled crumpled greenbacks in her hands. A half-dollar fell to the floor. She stooped, naked, groping for it. He rushed down the stairs, slammed the door, out into the icy glare of the arclight in the street. Coward, the word was like a pack of hounds screaming about his ears, yelping, tearing. This is what you've done to me, Nan. Tomorrow was colonnades of stage scenery tumbling about his ears. Through it he was fainting with desire for the woman's body naked on the bed under the gas jet. Nan's eyes, sea-grey, drowning him, the smell of her hair. He leaned against a lamp post and stared with stinging eyes down the empty darkness of the street. V On Fanshaw's desk was a large white envelope and within that envelope another envelope which contained engraved cards faced with tissuepaper. Fanshaw pulled off the tissuepaper and ran the nail of his little finger lightly across the lettering. Mr. and Mrs. Heaton W. Harrenden Announce the Marriage of their Daughter Alice to Mr. Chamberlain C. Mason at Twelve O'clock, Noon, February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelve at Harrenden Manor, Durham, Massachusetts. Then there was a little card For the accommodation of guests a special train will leave the North Station, Boston, at eleven fifteen, returning from Durham at five thirty. And another little card Mr. and Mrs. Heaton K. Harrenden request the pleasure of your company at the wedding breakfast at two o'clock, February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelve, at Harrenden Manor. A letter from Cham had been tucked in: Dear Fanshaw: You've got to come. Mrs. Harrenden says she wants an old-fashioned wedding, but Allie and I are going to try to pep it up a bit. Yours, Cham. Let's see, Fanshaw was thinking, what ought one to wear at a noon wedding? Noon. The time Cham and I took those two chorus girls canoeing at Norumbega Park, the mudsmell of the river.... And now Cham's marrying an heiress. Harrenden's Snowflake Meal. Like telegraph poles from the train the years slip by, so fast and nothing to catch hold of. Ought I to get a cutaway?