She was roused from her reverie by the sound of a motor stopping without. Her maid waited to place a black and gold wrap about her shoulders. "One moment," said Dita. Quickly she slipped the amulet on a thin, old-fashioned gold chain and fastened it about her throat. Then she went downstairs to greet her husband. Commonplaces of the most conventional and banal order they talked. Nothing else on the drive to the restaurant, nothing else on first taking their seats at the table on one side of the great garish room. There were many curious eyes on them, necks craned, the incredulous whisper ran: "Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth actually together! What does it mean!" The stereotyped babbling went on intermittently, until dinner had been ordered and the earlier courses come and gone, and then Dita suddenly awoke to the fact that her husband had taken the conversation into his own hands and was actually talking to her. Oh, of course, he had often talked to her before, arranged new amusements for her, discussed what jewels she would like, what plays she would care to see, what people interested her most, what journey she would enjoy. But now, she almost caught her breath at the surprise of it, he was talking to her as if she were a man, or at least an intelligent human being and not just merely--a pretty woman. He was talking straight ahead, discussing business matters, several interesting problems which had come up in his affairs during his recent western sojourn. He did not pause to explain anything to her, quite took it for granted that she would understand. He did not apparently stop to consider whether she was interested or amused, and that pleased her enormously. She began to ask questions, and he answered them fully, even pondering some of them carefully before replying. One he considered for a moment or so and then said: "Do you know, I had not thought of that before, that puts a new phase upon the whole situation." Her strand of rubies had never given Dita such a glow of pride and pleasure. "Ah, why have you never talked to me like this before?" she asked naively. "Think of all the stupid dinners we've eaten together when you treated me like a tiresome little girl who had to be continually amused, and I was one, too; as tongue-tied and missish as anything, because you took it for granted that I was." "No one could accuse you of being either tongue-tied or missish to-night. You are quite matronly in that black gown." "Oh, I love to hear about the big things that go on," she said enthusiastically, if irrelevantly, "but men will never talk to me about them. All my life, whenever I'd try really to talk sense to a man, he'd say, 'What wonderful eyes you have,' showing that he hadn't heard one word I'd been saying. They always seem to think that I expect them to tell me how lovely I am. It's the curse of the pretty woman."