“Oh, Mr. Paly!” cried Mrs. Merriman; and murmured to the nearest ladies: “For the music-- I thought he’d better come today.” Every one greeted Mr. Paly with enthusiasm. It _was_ poky, being only women and the Rector. And Mr. Paly had the dearest little flat in one of the old houses of the “Vieux Port”, such a tiny flat that one wondered how any one so large, manly and yet full of quick womanish movements, managed to fit in between the bric-a-brac. Mr. Paly clasped his hostess’s hand in a soft palm. “I’ve brought my young friend Lion Carstairs; you won’t mind? He’s going to help me with the programme.” But one glance at Mr. Carstairs made it clear that he did not mean to help any one with anything. He held out two lax fingers to Mrs. Merriman, sank into an armchair, and let his Antinous-lids droop over his sullen deep gray eyes. “He’s awfully good on Sicilian music ... noted down folk-songs at Taormina....” Mr. Paly whispered, his leonine head with its bushy eye-brows and silver crown bending confidentially to his neighbour. “Order!” rapped the Rector; and the meeting began. * * * * * At the Casino that night Kate Clephane, on the whole, was more bored than at the Rectory. After all, at the Merrimans’ there was a rather anxious atmosphere of kindliness, of a desire to help, and a retrospective piety about the war which had served them such a good turn, and of which they were still trying, in their tiny measure, to alleviate the ravages. Whereas the Betterlys-- “What? Another begging-list? No, my dear Kate; you don’t! Stony-broke; that’s what I am, and so’s Harry--ain’t you, Harry?” Marcia Betterly would scream, clanking her jewelled bangles, twisting one heavy hand through her pearls, and clutching with the other the platinum-and-diamond wrist-bag on which she always jokingly pretended that Kate Clephane had her eye. “Look out, Sid, she’s a regular train-robber; hold you up at your own door. I believe she’s squared the police: if she hadn’t she’d ’a been run in long ago.... Oh, the _war? What war?_ Is there another war on? What, that old one? Why, I thought _that_ one was over long ago.... You can’t get anybody _I_ know to talk about it even!” “Guess we’ve got our work cut out paying for it,” added Horace Betterly, stretching a begemmed and bloated hand toward the wine-list. “Well, I should _say_!” his wife agreed with him. “Sid, what form of liquid refreshment?” And “Sid”, a puffy Chicago business man, grew pink in his effort to look knowing and not name the wrong champagne....