Van Ness was flattered. Tom threw his head back, looking at the big man in a way that drew a line between them. Van Ness came up, he seated himself beside the pair. Marcia’s lips curled as if they had been stung. Van Ness beamed on Tom, as he might have if Tom from great natural kindness had done him a good turn. Marcia was stiff in her chair, looking away. She seemed to be suffering and not to care for the instant if others saw it. Then, her face covered. Why did David sense bravery in that? Marcia thought she could wound either man by being affable to the other but she wanted to wound both. Then it occurred to her that smiling on Van Ness might delight Tom merely. She knew his game. He was done with her. He was putting her away, neatly, satisfactorily--as he did, doubtless, all things. The bitterness was, she could not but fall in with his plans. They were her plans also. None fitted them better than King Van Ness. If only Tom were not thrusting her into his arms! If only she had the madness, the courage to flout Van Ness in order to spite Tom! She believed she might. But if she failed, thereafter, to marry as well? her humiliation would still be before Tom: he would laugh at her, or pity. It was all one. He was capable of saying: “Why didn’t you take Van Ness? Don’t say I stood in your way!” Marcia knew she must take him, some time. If only she could in the passing send an arrow to the man who, having been her lover, had now the impudence to tell her: “I am your friend, Marcia. I am deeply concerned.” Her friend! She had never been able to discover her successor. She sat now, finding in her negative aloofness the one sure way of not satisfying Tom in an attempt to hurt him. He took pleasure so strangely! David was next to Mrs. May Delano. She straining to take some humble part in the near tête-à-tête of Fennido and Stegending with Constance Bardale. She discerned David’s separation from the group: deduced therefrom his inferiority. She was afraid to give much heed to him. She was a proper, nervous little woman. She had revolted from her world because she was so like her stodgy mother, so much attached to her thrifty and careful father. She had married a mentally inferior Irishman because he owned two theaters on Broadway and was hence in touch with “art.” All her life was a pursuit of “interesting” people: in reality a retreat--equally vain--from the middle class whose manners and beliefs rooted in her soul. Her simple Jewish family took up her husband with delight. “I think, dear,” he told her in order to give her pleasure, “I think I have more good Jewish friends than any other sort.” She was, indeed, miserably married.... David was not averse to her leaving him alone. He felt what this woman was, since he was untutored in the symbols of her pose. He wondered why Mr. Stegending bit his lips.