With painful slowness Elim made his preparations to descend; his fingers could hardly buckle the stiff strap of his revolver sling, but finally he made his way downstairs through a deep narrow hall. He turned from a blank wall to a darkened reception room, with polished mahogany, somber books and engravings on the walls, and a rosy blur of fire in the hearth. A more formal chamber lay at his right, empty, but through an opposite door he caught the faint clatter of a spoon. Rosemary Roselle was seated, rigid and white, at the end of a table that bore a scattered array of dishes. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and her hands, on the table, were clenched. On her left a man in an unmarked blue uniform sat, sagging heavily forward in his chair, breathing stertorously, with a dark flush over a pouched and flaccid countenance. Opposite him, sitting formally upright, was a negro in a carefully brushed gray suit, with a crimson satin necktie surcharged by vivid green lightning. His bony face, the deep pits of his temples, were the dry spongy black of charcoal, and behind steel-rimmed glasses his eyes rolled like yellow agates. He glanced about, furtive and startled, when Elim Meikeljohn entered, but he was immediately reassured by Elim's disordered uniform. He made a solemn obeisance. “Colonel,” he said, “will you make one of a little informal repast? We are, you see, at the lady's table.” Overcome by a sharp weakness, Elim slipped into the chair at his side and faced Rosemary Roselle. The latter gave no sign of his presence. She sat frozen into a species of statuesque rage. “Like you,” the negro continued pompously, “we invited ourselves. All things are free and easy for all. The glorious principle of equality instituted lately has swept away--swept away the inviderous distinctions of class and color. The millenium has come!” He made a grandiloquent gesture with a sooty hand. “'Ray!” the sodden individual opposite unexpectedly cried. “We came in,” the other continued, “to uphold our rights as the exponents of--of----” “You sneaked in the kitchen,” the woman in the doorway interrupted; “and I found you rummaging in the press.” “Silence!” the orator commanded. “Are you unaware of the dignity now resting on your kinks--hair, hair.” He rose, facing Elim Meikeljohn. “Colonel, gentleman, in a conglomeration where we are all glorious cohevals of--of--” “Shut up!” said the apostrophized colonel, sudden and fretful. “Get out!” The orator paused, disconcerted, in the midflow of his figures; and unaccustomed arrogance struggled with habitual servility. “Gentleman,” he repeated, “in a corposity of souls high above all narrow malignations--” Elim Meikeljohn took his revolver from its holster and laid it before him on the table. The weapon produced an electrical effect on the figure nodding in a drunken stupor. He rose abruptly and uncertain. “I'm going,” he asserted; “come on, Spout. You can be free and equal better somewheres else.”