When the curtain at the door had fallen behind him, Dita sat down again. She did not seem to be thinking or mentally engaged in any way whatever. On the contrary, she seemed to be waiting, two or three minutes passed, five. Still she waited. Ah, a bitter smile hovered for one moment around her lips. Her whole tense figure relaxed a little as if the moment which she had so confidently expected had come. There was the sound of the shutting of the outer door in the small room to the left, then a halting step across the bare and polished floor. Eugene's step. He paused a moment in the doorway leading into the larger room, but as Dita did not turn nor give any sign whatever of having heard him, he came on. "Back again, you see," he said. "I saw Hepworth leaving the house just as I came about the corner up here, so I knew the coast was clear. May I sit down?" For the first time Dita looked at him. He was unmistakably not of the same temper in which he had left her an hour before. The buoyancy and spring of him had vanished. His eyes were clouded, his mouth depressed, certain lines on his brow and about his mouth stood out more markedly than usual. In fact, he seemed to have halted midway in some mood between dismay and anger. And as Dita observed this, there again played about her mouth for one instant that same, sad, bitter, secretive smile. She had leaned back in her chair as if prepared to remain some time, but she made no effort whatever to carry on a conversation or even to embark on one. The frown deepened on Eugene's brow. This attitude on her part was evidently irritating to him. "Everything settled, Dita, and satisfactorily?" "What do you mean by satisfactorily?" she asked, letting a moment or two lapse between his question and her answer. "I mean everything arranged in your favor," he replied with a short laugh. "He is rather sure to do that, you know. He likes to do things with the grand air." "Oh, no, Eugene, it is you who like to affect the grand air. With him it is natural." He looked up at her quickly. "It sounds, it sounds," he said, "as if you might possibly be on the verge of a sirocco. Don't Dita, I implore you. I am off the key myself." "Why?" she asked. He lifted his shoulders. "Ah, that I do not know." "I refused any alimony, Eugene," she said abruptly.