After dinner they went to the library, and the servant put the coffee and liqueurs on a low table before her and left the room. She looked singularly soft and girlish in her rosy pale dress, against the dark leather of one of his bachelor armchairs. A day earlier the contrast would have charmed him. He turned away now, choosing a cigar with affected deliberation. "Did Haskett come?" he asked, with his back to her. "Oh, yes--he came." "You didn't see him, of course?" She hesitated a moment. "I let the nurse see him." That was all. There was nothing more to ask. He swung round toward her, applying a match to his cigar. Well, the thing was over for a week, at any rate. He would try not to think of it. She looked up at him, a trifle rosier than usual, with a smile in her eyes. "Ready for your coffee, dear?" He leaned against the mantelpiece, watching her as she lifted the coffee-pot. The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets and tipped her soft hair with brightness. How light and slender she was, and how each gesture flowed into the next! She seemed a creature all compact of harmonies. As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship. They were his, those white hands with their flitting motions, his the light haze of hair, the lips and eyes.... She set down the coffee-pot, and reaching for the decanter of cognac, measured off a liqueur-glass and poured it into his cup. Waythorn uttered a sudden exclamation. "What is the matter?" she said, startled. "Nothing; only--I don't take cognac in my coffee." "Oh, how stupid of me," she cried. Their eyes met, and she blushed a sudden agonized red. III TEN DAYS later, Mr. Sellers, still house-bound, asked Waythorn to call on his way down town. The senior partner, with his swaddled foot propped up by the fire, greeted his associate with an air of embarrassment. "I'm sorry, my dear fellow; I've got to ask you to do an awkward thing for me." Waythorn waited, and the other went on, after a pause apparently given to the arrangement of his phrases: "The fact is, when I was knocked out I had just gone into a rather complicated piece of business for--Gus Varick." "Well?" said Waythorn, with an attempt to put him at his ease. "Well--it's this way: Varick came to me the day before my attack. He had evidently had an inside tip from somebody, and had made about a hundred thousand. He came to me for advice, and I suggested his going in with Vanderlyn." "Oh, the deuce!" Waythorn exclaimed. He saw in a flash what had happened. The investment was an alluring one, but required negotiation. He listened intently while Sellers put the case before him, and, the statement ended, he said: "You think I ought to see Varick?" "I'm afraid I can't as yet. The doctor is obdurate. And this thing can't wait. I hate to ask you, but no one else in the office knows the ins and outs of it."