"What goes into that?" Odd asked, conscious of a little temper; all seemed combined to push Hilda more and more into a slightly derogatory and very mysterious background. "Well, she is not so clever as her sister. Katherine can entertain a roomful of people. Grace, tact, sympathy, the impalpable something that makes success of the best kind, Katherine has it." Katherine's friendly, breezy frankness had certainly amused and interested Odd at the dinner-table, but Lady ----'s remarks now produced in him one of those quick and unreasoning little revulsions of feeling by which the judgments of a half-hour before are suddenly reversed. Katherine's cleverness was that of the majority of the girls he took down to dinner, rather _voulu_, banal, tiresome. Odd felt that he was unjust, also that he was a little cross. "There are some clevernesses above entertaining a roomful of people. After all, success isn't the test, is it?" Lady---- smiled, an unconvinced smile-- "You should be the last person to say that." "I?" Odd made no attempt to contradict the evident flattery of his hostess' tones, but his ejaculation meant to himself a volume of negatives. If success were the test, he was a sorry failure. He was making his way out of the room when Captain Archinard stopped him. "I have hardly had one word with you, Odd," said the Captain, whose high-bridged nose and finely set eyes no longer saved his face from its fundamental look of peevish pettiness. "Mrs. Brooke is going to take Katherine home. It's a fine night, won't you walk?" Odd accepted the invitation with no great satisfaction; he had never found the Captain sympathetic. After lifting their hats to Mrs. Brooke and Katherine as they drove out of the Embassy Courtyard, the two men turned into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré together. "We are not far from you, you know," the Captain said--"Rue Pierre Charron; you said you were in the Marboeuf quarter, didn't you? We are rather near the Trocadero, uphill, so I'll leave you at the door of your hotel." They lit cigars and walked on rather silently. The late October night was pleasantly fresh, and the Champs Elysées, as they turned into it, almost empty between the upward sweep of its line of lights. "Ten years is a jolly long time," remarked Captain Archinard, "and a jolly lot of disagreeable things may happen in ten years. You knew we'd left the Priory, of course?" "I was very sorry to hear it." "Devilish hard luck. It wasn't a choice of evils, though, if that is any consolation; it was that or starvation." "As bad as that?"