“You do me an injustice, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett,” answered Richard, returning her smile. “I know that my opinion regarding your song is of no great value from a technical standpoint, but I can readily understand how glad the publishers are to get your work.” Richard had learned much about the Percy-Bartletts that afternoon from John Fenton. He had heard of the husband’s prominence in society and business circles and in club life, and of the wife’s devotion to music, of her talent as a song-writer. But Fenton had not told him that Mrs. Percy-Bartlett had brown eyes that had a beseeching, almost caressing expression at times, that her mouth was rather large, but wonderfully symmetrical, and especially attractive when she smiled and showed her white, even teeth. Fenton had been silent also regarding her brown hair--hair that curled and shimmered and waved with a coquettish life of its own, and gave to Richard Stoughton an almost irresistible desire to stroke it with his hand. That she had a white, firm neck, and rounded, dimpled arms, and long, tapering hands that were worthy a sculptor’s art, his friend had not informed him. Perhaps Fenton did not know all this. “At all events,” thought Richard to himself, “I’m inclined to think that if Fenton _could_ see her beauty, although he might admire it, he would find some reason for saying that she had no right to it--that so much of it as she derived from her handsome ancestors was ill-gotten gain.” Which thought, the reader will observe, proved that Richard had been skimming the books Fenton had given to him, and had come, as he fondly believed, upon certain arguments that seemed to him to be founded on fallacy. Stoughton never went very deeply into any subject presented to his attention. He had that faculty of mind which enabled him to cover a good deal of ground at a glance, and to condense into showy half-truths the results of his rapid mental processes. It was this gift--a dangerous one to a man who wishes to make a solid rather than a glittering success of life--that had suddenly given him a prominent place on the _Trumpet_ as the spiciest paragrapher the editorial page had had for years. And it was this faculty applied to the airy nothings of unimportant conversation that had given him the reputation of being a wit--a reputation much more to be dreaded than that of a rake. No woman fears a rake, but she has a deep-seated dread of a wit. “But come, Mr. Stoughton,” said Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, standing up and looking at him with mock commiseration, “I have been very cruel to inflict my music on you, when I know that you are dying for a cigar. Come into the library and let me repair my lack of hospitality. Mr. Percy-Bartlett would feel that he had committed sacrilege if he failed to smoke a cigar after dinner.” “It would be something worse than sacrilege in such companionship,” remarked Stoughton, lighting a “perfecto” and seating himself opposite his hostess; “it would be folly.”