Sometimes Thurley met Dan with a zest for his boyish mannerisms, his telling of the rise in wool goods, what a splendid housewife Lorraine was—only she didn’t understand things—how jealous he was of the basso who made love to Thurley on the opera stage. Sometimes she looked at him in disdain, the strange sneer on her lips as she thought of what a dull existence was Dan’s, what a lark it was to see him strive to make as good a showing as the young millionaire who was hopelessly infatuated with this Thurley Precore, boasting at his club that she would wear his necklace or his flowers before the season ended. The vampire which is in all women and which is not a sinister quality only to be raved about as “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,” had for the time being become supreme in Thurley. Dan did not understand this—any more than he understood why he was unhappy when he was near Thurley and always thinking about Lorraine and why, when he returned home, fortified a thousand times by the blessed memories of Thurley’s beauty and the stolen moments he had claimed, he was unhappier still. Dan would return to his immaculate, prosaic living-room where Lorraine would greet him and inform him all in the same breath that Lydia Hoyt was engaged and Lorraine would give a kitchen shower—and did Dan notice how the veranda posts sagged, hadn’t he better have a man come up and see about them?—oh, yes, there was something wrong with her car, well—she had let Owen drive it because he had deliveries to make ’way out in the country—beefsteak was three cents higher a pound than last week and two of the church deacons had resigned because they couldn’t have their way about the music. After which Dan would slip away to unpack his bag and Lorraine to prepare his supper. There would be an abundant, well cooked meal on the prosaic table with its nightmares of hand painted peppers and salts and cut glass monstrosities, the water pitcher heavily banded with gilt. After eating his fill, Dan would depart to smoke in peace and wonder what Lorraine would think of Thurley’s new frocks and the baskets of flowers which forever adorned her rooms, of the bizarre friends and their weird ways—he would end, however, with the somewhat hopeless consolation that Lorraine had about as much imagination or capacity for artistic enjoyment as the old lady who, upon seeing mountains for the first time, merely said querulously, “Dear me, if any one ever started to roll—” For Lorraine would have probably remarked, after viewing Thurley’s apartment, “How in the world does she ever get the work done!” letting the panorama of joys and possibilities sweep on uncomprehended.