She hesitated, then bade him good night languidly, slipping back into her old attitude of indifference. “I am going home to rest. Good night. I don’t think the duchess would let you go, no matter what you did!” Dan, standing there at her motor door, this beautiful, well-known woman bantering him, leaning toward him, was conscious of her alone, all snowy and small and divine in her enveloping scarf, lost in the corner of her big car. “I hate to have you go back alone to the Savoy. I really do. Please let me—” But she shook her head. “Tell the man the Savoy,” and as Dan, carrying out her instructions, closed the door, he said: “I don’t like that empty vase in there. Would you be very good and put some flowers in it if they came?” She wouldn’t promise, and he went on: “Will you put only my flowers in that vase always hereafter?” Then, “Why, of course not, goose,” she said shortly. “Will you please let me close the door and go home?” Dan walked into the Carlton when her bright motor had slipped away, his evening coat long and black flying its wings behind him, his hat on the back of his blond head, light of foot and step, a gay young figure among the late lingering crowd. He went to his apartments and missed Ruggles in the lonely quiet of the sitting-room, but as the night before Ruggles had done, Dan in his bedroom window stood looking out at the mist and fog through which before his eyes the things he had lately seen passed and repassed, specter-like, winglike, across the gloom. Finally, in spite of the fact that he was an engaged man with the responsibilities of marriage before him, he could think of but one thing to take with him when he finally turned to sleep. The face of the woman he was engaged to marry eluded him, but the face under the white hood of Letty Lane was in his dreams, and in his troubled visions he saw her shining, dovelike eyes. CHAPTER XIV—FROM INDIA’S CORAL STRANDS Mrs. Higgins, in Miss Lane’s apartment at the Savoy, was adjusting the photographs and arranging the flowers when she was surprised by a caller, who came up without the formality of sending his name. “Do you think,” Blair asked her, “that Miss Lane would see me half a minute? I called yesterday, and the day before, as soon as I saw that there was a substitute singing in _Mandalay_. Tell her I’m as full of news as a charity report, please, and I rather guess that will fetch her.” Something fetched her, for in a few minutes she came languidly in, and by the way she smiled at her visitor it might be thought Dan Blair’s name alone had brought her in. The actress had been ill for a fortnight with what the press notices said was influenza. She wore a teagown, long and white as foam, her hair rolled in a soft knot, and her face was pale as death. Frail and small as she was, she was more ethereal than when in perfect health.