"Shall I alter Madame's yellow gown?" Marie wondered at Esmé's silence. "Madame is weary of its present aspect, with silver and violet. I can make it new--and the waist, it seemed a little tight last evening for Madame." "It wasn't," Esmé flung out. "It's quite right. Get me new corsets, Marie--these are old. A taxi, yes." Speeding westward swiftly, but with dread flying as swiftly. Not that--not the ending of her careless, selfish life. "Why, Esmé, what a pretty gown; but you look pale, dear." Lady Blakeney was at the Berkeley. A big, soft woman, with a weak, pretty face, palpably face-creamed, powdered, tinted, yet the whole effect that of a carefully-done picture, harmonizing, never clashing. With her brown hair, her deep brown eyes, she was a foil to flashing, dazzling Esmé. "Just four, you see," Lady Blakeney sauntered to her table. She was in dull rose, exquisitely dressed. "Yes, Jerry and Jimmie Helmsley." Lord Gerald Roche, slim, distinctly young, just getting over being deeply in love, and still trying to think he was a victim to it, more impressive, as if to whip his jaded fancy, came in; a bunch of rare mauve orchids, fresh from a florist's, in his hand. Behind him, Jimmie Gore Helmsley, a tall man, dark, with satyr's ears, thick, sensual lips, and black eyes of cool determination. No one realized Jimmie's fascination until they spoke to him. It was in his manner, his power of subtle flattery, of making the woman he spoke to feel herself someone apart, not of common attraction, but a goddess, an allurement. Unkind men, unfascinated, called Jimmie's black eyes boiled sloes, and swore that he rouged his cheeks; but women raved about him. Jimmie was a pursuer of many women, a relentless one if his fancy were touched; there were girls--girls of his own rank of life--who whispered his name bitterly. The plucking of a bird sometimes amused him more than the wearing of a full-blown rose. "Ah you! the sunshine is here now." He bent over Esmé's hands, and his flattery was as water pattering off polished marble. Esmé had no use for the Gore Helmsleys of life; she had laughed when he had given her a flower as though it were made of diamonds. Jimmie made things as cheap for himself as he could. But Esmé talked to him now. Jerry was almost whispering to Denise Blakeney, making his adoration foolishly conspicuous. The restaurant was filling. Denise had ordered luncheon; she never trusted to chance. A soufflet of fish, asparagus, grilled fillets of beef. As the fish was handed to them, Denise Blakeney started and flushed painfully. Her young admirer had been showing her a jewel flashing in a tiny box--a pear-shaped pink pearl. "Oh!" she cried sharply, and pushed the box away. A bluff man, with heavy features, had gone up the room and sat down at a small table. His companion was an elderly woman, dowdy, rather fussily impressed.