"Only till tomorrow, Janet. I pledge my word to have everything explained to your satisfaction if you’ll come tomorrow to Charlotte’s studio in Washington Mews. The party begins at four." "The party!" "Precisely. An engagement party for Charlotte; a surprise party for you." Saying which, and protesting that he had talked her deaf, dumb and blind, and affirming that he had never felt so horribly out of character in his life, Mark Pryor gravely took his leave. *IV* In fulfillment of her promise, Janet went the following afternoon to the converted stable in Washington Mews where Charlotte Beecher cultivated sculpture in an atmosphere of aristocratic Bohemianism. It was the same studio in which, of old, Cornelia Covert had luxuriated whenever the routine of Outlawry in Kips Bay got on her nerves. Spring and hope in a young woman’s breast usually add love to their number. In Janet’s case they added thoughts of Robert. All morning she had been plagued with a feeling, amounting to a conviction, that he would be at Charlotte’s party. But when she reached the Mews, she found that Pryor and Lydia Dyson were the only other guests at a gathering which bade fair to be intimate and exclusive. For a minute or two her spirits were considerably dashed. She waited for Pryor’s advertised surprise to eventuate; but she waited in the dark, nobody offering so much as a ray of enlightenment. While Lydia Dyson stretched herself supine upon the magnificent tiger rug before the blazing fire, Pryor fetched wineglasses and poured out champagne. "Here’s to those about to wed!" cried Lydia, raising her glass, and then quoting: "’Farewell, happy fields where Joy forever dwells, Hail Horrors!’" "You might give us a more cheerful toast, old girl," protested Charlotte. "An occasion like this conduces to high philosophy rather than to vulgar good cheer," retorted Lydia, whose Egyptian beauty—ebony hair against a pale olive skin—had never been more stunning. "However, since you wish it, I’ll take another shot: ’Here’s to continued failure for all of us!’" "Lydia, you _are_ a merry soul today," exclaimed Janet, amidst the general laughter. "And why not?" inquired Lydia, with a provoking drawl. "Why not? When I see my last blood curdler running well into the two hundred thousands!" "Lydia is right," said Pryor. "In the present state of civilization, all the best people are failures, glorious failures." He contrasted the fortunes of Lydia’s pornographic romances with the fate of her one serious experiment in fiction. The romances sold like hot cakes. But the serious work, a short novel in which, with pitiless Hogarthian realism, she had developed an episode between a brother and a sister, had been refused by her publisher on the ground that "it was too terrible!" Then there was his own case! Had he not failed as a detective because too much secret information was always breezing his way?