Evans Rutledge was in a fever of anxiety lest that name should get to the public. He was sure that he could not face Elise again if it did. Senator Ruffin’s rebuke had sunk deep into his heart and he felt more guilty than Smith. He looked over the morning and evening papers very carefully to see whether they had discovered the young woman, before he finally decided to go to Senator DeVale’s as he had promised Lola. When he arrived he found, beside Elise, only Alice Mackenzie, Hazard and young MacLane, an under-secretary of the British embassy. Others who were to come failed to appear. Elise was not pleased with the situation. She was quite willing to be ordinarily civil to Mr. Rutledge, but she knew that nothing could separate MacLane and Alice Mackenzie, and that Hazard had known Lola so long and had proposed to her so regularly and insistently that he was for her or for nobody. It looked a little too much, therefore, as if she had chosen Evans for her very own for the evening. She did not want him to think such a thing possible. She remembered his point-blank editorial utterance that those small sentiments—loves and hates—melted away before exhibitions of social equality with negroes—so at least she construed it—and she could not but resent it, though she would not admit she troubled herself to do that. "Now, young people," said Lola, "as the programme has been spoiled we will make this an evening of do-as-you-please." "Good, very good," commented Hazard. "In that case you will please to come over here and take this chair and let’s finish that conversation we were having last night when the unpronounceable Russian took you away from me." "I am afraid that conversation is a serial story," she laughed, taking the chair he placed for her. MacLane asked Alice Mackenzie some vague question about a song, which only she could interpret, and they by common impulse went through the wide door to the piano in the back parlour, where after she had hummed a short love ballad for him to piano accompaniment they dropped into a pianissimo duet of love without accompaniment.