"Mary, I’m on my fourth step," purred her voice in reply. "I can fairly see you dressing." Through Mazie’s door came a coloratura shriek. "In my mind’s eye, that is," added Claude, after a pause. Resuming his seat he addressed the right door again. "Cornelia, shall we go to the Turk’s or to the Spaniard’s?" "I’m sorry, Lothario, but I’ve got a date with ’Big Burley’ for tonight." "Hutchins Burley? Then have a good time!" As his skeptical inflection belied his words, Cornelia asked for an explanation. "Hutch is in a devil of a temper," declared Claude grimly, "because Rob covered him with ridicule at the Outlaw Club." "Leave it to Robert Lloyd!" This exclamation from the right door was followed by a peremptory command from the left. "Say, wait a moment—I can’t hear you, Claude—and I can’t find my garter." Ignoring Mazie’s cries of distress, Claude proceeded to explain to the right door that Burley’s temper had been ruffled that afternoon at a meeting of the Outlaws, a club for young radical and artistic people which they all belonged to, and which, since the recent signing of the armistice, had more than trebled its membership. Friction had arisen from the contact of two facts: the need of money to provide the club with larger quarters, and the proposal to hold a public masked ball as an easy means of raising the money. Hutchins Burley, who had organized the Outlaws, sponsored this proposal, but some of the members opposed it on the ground that, in the existing state of public opinion, a radical club might get a black eye from the improprieties or the hooliganism that outsiders could practice under cover of the masks. "Big Burley" had flattened out most of the opposition with his usual steam-rollering bluster, the Outlaws, like more timid gentry, being victims of a popular superstition that a noisy debater is always in the right. Leading the minority, Claude had moved the substitution of a restricted costume ball for the free and easy masquerade. He was ably seconded by his friend Robert Lloyd, whose short satiric speech won over many supporters, so many that "Big Burley" fairly swelled with the venom of frustration. Claude assured Cornelia that, if a narrow majority had not finally declared itself in favor of the masked ball, Burley would certainly have exploded. As it was— *II* Further explanations were cut short by the opening of the door on the left. "Mary, I’m on my last step," announced the occupant, standing on the threshold. Mazie Ross was taller and slenderer than her purring tones foreshadowed. Her intimates knew that, in addition to being extremely pretty, she was extremely bad. Young as she was, her looks were already enameled with cruelty. A long procession of lovers had left her wholly incapable of tenderness or shame.