On his return to the drawing-room he found that the tide had set toward the supper-table, and when it finally carried him thither it was to land him in the welcoming arms of Bob Wade. “Hullo, old man! Where have you been all this time?--Winterman? Oh, _he’s_ talking to Howland: yes, I managed it finally. I believe Mrs. Bain has steered them into the library, so that they shan’t be disturbed. I gave her an idea of the situation, and she was awfully kind. We’d better leave them alone, don’t you think? I’m trying to get a croquette for Miss Fosdick.” Bernald’s secret leapt in his bosom, and he devoted himself to the task of distributing sandwiches and champagne while his pulses danced to the tune of the cosmic laughter. The vision of Pellerin and his Interpreter, face to face at last, had a Cyclopean grandeur that dwarfed all other comedy. “And I shall hear of it presently; in an hour or two he’ll be telling me about it. And that hour will be all mine--mine and his!” The dizziness of the thought made it difficult for Bernald to preserve the balance of the supper-plates he was distributing. Life had for him at that moment the completeness which seems to defy disintegration. The throng in the dining-room was thickening, and Bernald’s efforts as purveyor were interrupted by frequent appeals, from ladies who had reached repleteness, that he should sit down a moment and tell them all about his interesting friend. Winterman’s fame, trumpeted abroad by Miss Fosdick, had reached the four corners of the Uplift Club, and Bernald found himself fabricating _de toutes pieces_ a Winterman legend which should in some degree respond to the Club’s demand for the human document. When at length he had acquitted himself of this obligation, and was free to work his way back through the lessening groups into the drawing-room, he was at last rewarded by a glimpse of his friend, who, still densely encompassed, towered in the centre of the room in all his sovran ugliness. Their eyes met across the crowd; but Bernald gathered only perplexity from the encounter. What were Pellerin’s eyes saying to him? What orders, what confidences, what indefinable apprehension did their long look impart? The young man was still trying to decipher their complex message when he felt a tap on the arm, and turned to encounter the rueful gaze of Bob Wade, whose meaning lay clearly enough on the surface of his good blue stare. “Well, it won’t work--it won’t work,” the doctor groaned. “What won’t?” “I mean with Howland. Winterman won’t. Howland doesn’t take to him. Says he’s crude--frightfully crude. And you know how Howland hates crudeness.” “Oh, I know,” Bernald exulted. It was the word he had waited for--he saw it now! Once more he was lost in wonder at Howland’s miraculous faculty for always, as the naturalists said, being true to type. “So I’m afraid it’s all up with his chance of writing. At least _I_ can do no more,” said Wade, discouraged.