“When you see me again.” She moved farther from him, suddenly in a great necessity to be home. She left him, talking at her, and went swiftly through the gloom to Regent Street. Letting herself into the still hall, the amber serenity of lamplight in suave spaciousness, she swung shut the heavy door with a startling vigor. Then she stood motionless, the cape slipping from her shoulders in glistening and soft white folds about her arms, to the carpet. Honora wasn't faint, not for a moment had she been afraid of Jason Burrage, this was not a rebellion of over-strung nerves; yet a passing blindness, a spiritual shudder, possessed her. She had the sensation of having just passed through an overwhelming adventure: yet all that had happened was commonplace, even sordid. She had met a drunken man whom she hardly knew beyond his name and an adventitious fact, and insisted on his going home. Asking him to call on her had been little less than perfunctory--an impersonal act of duty. Yet her being vibrated as if a loud and disturbing bell had been unexpectedly sounded at her ear; she was responding to an imperative summons. In her room, changing for supper, this feeling vanished, and left her usual introspective humor. Jason had spoken a profound truth, which her surprise had recognized at the time, in reminding her that she was an ordinary woman, like, for instance, Olive Stanes. The isolation of her dignity had hidden that from her for a number of years. She had come to think of herself exclusively as a Canderay. Later her sharp enjoyment in probing into all pretensions, into herself, got slightly the better of her. “I saw Jason Burrage this evening,” she told Mrs. Cozzens. “If he was sober,” that individual returned, “it might be worth recalling.” “But he wasn't. He nearly fell into the harbor. I asked him to see us.” “With your education, Honora, there is really no excuse for confusing the singular and plural. I haven't any doubt you asked him here, but that has nothing to do with us.” “You might be amused by his accounts of California. For, although you never complain, I can see that you think it dull.” “I am an old woman,” Herriot Cozzens stated, “my life was quite normally full, and I am content here with you. Any dullness you speak of I regret for another reason.” “You are afraid I'll get preserved like a salted haddock. He may not come.” ***** Honora was in the less formal of the drawing rooms when Jason Burrage was announced. He came forward almost immediately, in the most rigorous evening attire, a new silk hat on his arm. “You had no trouble getting one,” she nodded in its direction. “Four,” he replied tersely.