Eustace Bylant was a novelist of considerable distinction, thirty-eight in years, and admittedly the bridge across the chasm that divided the “younger generation,” which had brought a new if somewhat strident note into American fiction, and the stable group that went its serene way based firmly on the traditions of England. His own base was as firm as England’s Gibraltar, but his undiminished curiosity, the activity of his mind, and his genuine interest in current life and thought, enabled him without effort to be as modern as the youngsters. Sometimes more so, for the youngsters were often ingenuously mediæval. And his religion was art, words his flexible tools; he could create a living picture of dire offensiveness without an offensive word. An inexorable realist, he scorned to introduce beauty where beauty was not, but when forced by the exigencies of the story to create an unclean interior inhabited by persons who declined to wash, he conveyed his meaning so craftily that the reader was uncomfortably aware of an assortment of smells and raucous sounds and ugly images, which he remembered long after dismissing the grease and grime and stenches of less accomplished recorders of life at its worst. Bylant had never made an effort to repress the mobile play of his features and looked less than his thirty-eight years, in spite of the fact that he was a bright light at sophisticate parties when they did not interfere with his work. His long nose was sharp and investigating, his mouth would have been sensuous but for an almost rigid firmness of the lower lip, and his lively gray eyes sparkled with tolerance and good-humor. He wore an infinitesimal mustache and a short pointed beard. He was always meticulously groomed and radiated good health; his large firm hands were as carefully tended as a fastidious woman’s, although he was as masculine as Geoffrey Pelham and something of an athlete. Gita, who, in her worst days, had polished her nails, compared the hands of the two men. Dr. Pelham’s were long and sensitive and flexible, but no doubt he thought it sufficient to keep them clean and disinfected and wasted no time on a buffer. Gita had arrived early by request, spent half an hour in Elsie’s bedroom, and listened none too patiently to a brief biography of the distinguished guest. “I’ve not seen so very much of him, considering he’s a great friend of my brother,” Elsie had rattled on, “but he always calls when he comes to Atlantic City; sometimes drops in on me at the office. And I’ve met him at a few parties in New York. He’s known from the first that I am the occasional Elizabeth Pelham of the magazines. Shortly after my début as ‘E. B.’ he introduced me to Suzan Forbes, who took me firmly by the hand and steered me into the haven of the Lucy Stone League, where cognominal transitions from father to husband are sternly tabu. Do I look all right?” Gita had assured her she looked lovely, and they had gone downstairs arm in arm.