"I understand," she answered. "You needn't bother to send word even, if you don't wish. I'll be tired from shopping and shan't care to go out this evening, anyhow." In the afternoon she drove with Mrs. Fanshaw, wife of one of Jack's business acquaintances--they had dined at the Fanshaws' when they paused in New York on the way home from Europe. Pauline was at the hotel again at five; while she and Mrs. Fanshaw were having tea together in the palm garden a telegram was handed to her. She read it, then said to Mrs. Fanshaw: "I was going to ask you and your husband to dine with us. Jack sends word he can't be here, but--why shouldn't you come just the same?" "No you must go with us," Mrs. Fanshaw replied. "We've got a box at Weber and Fields', and two men asked, and we need another woman. I'd have asked you before, but there wouldn't be room for any more men." Mrs. Fanshaw had to insist until she had proved that the invitation was sincere; then, Pauline accepted--a distraction was always agreeable, never so agreeable as when it offered itself unannounced. It was toward the end of the dinner that Mrs. Fanshaw happened to say: "I see your husband's like all of them. I don't believe there ever was a woman an American man wouldn't desert for business." "Oh, I don't in the least mind," replied Pauline. "I like him to show that he feels free. Why, when we were in Paris on the return trip and had been married only two months, he got tangled up in business and used to leave me for a day--for two days, once." At Pauline's right sat a carefully dressed young man whose name she had not caught--she learned afterward that he was Mowbray Langdon. He was now giving her a stare of amused mock-admiration. When he saw that he had her attention, he said: "Really, Mrs. Dumont, I can't decide which to admire most--YOUR trust or your husband's." Pauline laughed--it struck her as ridiculous that either she or Jack should distrust the other. Indeed, she only hazily knew what distrust meant, and hadn't any real belief that "such things" actually existed. Half an hour later the party was driving up to Weber and Fields'. Pauline, glancing across the thronged sidewalk and along the empty, brilliantly lighted passage leading into the theater, saw a striking, peculiar-looking woman standing at the box-office while her escort parleyed with the clerk within. "How much that man looks like Jack," she said to herself--and then she saw that it was indeed Jack. Not the Jack she thought she knew, but quite another person, the one he tried to hide from her--too carelessly, because he made the common mistake of underestimating the sagacity of simplicity. A glance at the woman, a second glance at Dumont, his flushed, insolent face now turned full front--and she KNEW this unfamiliar and hitherto-only-hinted Jack.