She arose in a small flutter of excitement, and patted her faultless hair before the mirror, turning her head this way and that. Gone was her doubtfulness, her wistfulness; she had brightened like a mirror when a lamp is brought into the room. The warm color in her cheeks deepened, and her eyes felicitated their doubles in the mirror. Lightly she fluttered down the broad stairway to the tiled hall below. At the entrance to the parlor she paused a moment, then swept back the heavy curtain with such an air as one might use in unveiling a statue. A man, sitting in the big Turkish rocking-chair between the front windows, rose hastily to his feet. He was a compact, short-statured, middle-aged man, with a look of grave alertness behind the friendly set of his face. “Mrs. Wendell?” he murmured, coming forward. “And so you,” she said, still poising between the curtains, “are Ames Hallton!” Immediately she laughed. “That sounds like melodrama,” she exclaimed. “I’m very glad to see you.” They shook hands. Her eyes continued to regard him with the puzzled interest that wonderful objects frequently inspire when seen closely. There was a faint shadow of disappointment on her face, but she did not allow it to linger. “It was kind--it was awf’ly kind of you to come,” she said. “Sha’n’t we sit down? Do you know, I almost thought you wouldn’t come.” “Your letter was very interesting,” he returned dryly. “I tried to make it that way--so interesting that you just couldn’t keep from coming.” She folded her hands in her brown-silk lap and gravely bowed her head so that light from the window could bring out the copper tints in her hair. She felt the judicial expression of the gray eyes watching her, and chose the simplest means of making partizans of them. “I was quite desperate, and after I’d read your ‘Love’s Ordeal’ I knew you were the one person who could help me.” “Have you already left your husband?” he inquired. She winced a little, and her brows protested. “You remind me of a surgeon,” she said; “but that’s what I need--that’s what attracted me to you in your book. It’s all so calm and simple and scientific. It made me realize for the first time what I was--it and Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House.’ I was nothing but a plaything, a parasite, a mistress, a doll.” She bowed her head in shame. The warm color flooding her cheeks was as flawless as that in the finest tinted bisque. “What you say is very, very interesting,” murmured Hallton; and she knew from his changed tone that the fact of her beauty had at last been borne in upon him. With renewed confidence, almost with boldness, she lifted her head and continued: “You see, I was married when I was only eighteen--just out of boarding-school. I was already sick of hearing about love; everybody made love to me.” “Of course,” said Hallton, slightly sarcastic. “I couldn’t help that, could I?” she complained, turning the depths of her gold-brown eyes full upon him. He lowered his own eyes and pursed his lips.