Mrs. Waddington leaned forward while Kate got her reply. The mother in her, unsensitized though as it was, noted the sparkle in Kate's voice. But for the intervening door, she might have seen a great deal more sparkle in Kate's face, down-turned to listen. "Oh yes, I was aware of that!" Kate's voice went on. "Dolt! Did I catch it? You're a poor dissembler. You're too honest. You might tell the verdict before I tell you--" Mrs. Waddington could stand it no longer. It was so uncommon for her daughter to speak thus freely and emotionally at the telephone, that she must have a look. She rose, therefore, and crossed past the open hall door. She noticed a certain tension in her daughter's face as she bent her head to await the reply. "You poor, perplexed boy!" went on Kate's purring, caressing voice, "Then you need a confidant. Zinkand's at one--and I'll look my prettiest to draw you out!" Mrs. Waddington, when her daughter was come back into the room, renewed her plaint: "I wish you'd save for your parents a little of the graciousness you give your friends," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if you were getting somewhere. But here you are, nearly twenty-four years old and goodness knows if you've had a young man, I don't hear about it. How can a respectable young man want to marry a girl like you, I'd like to know? Those they play with, they don't marry." Kate's mood had changed completely. She advanced now with the prettiest caressing gesture in the world, threw one arm across the wrinkled skin and old lace of her mother's throat. Mrs. Waddington resisted for a moment, her head turned away; then, gradually, she let her being lap itself in this quieter air. Her head settled down on Kate's shoulder. "Perhaps," said Kate, "I may." "Well I wish you'd hurry up about it," said Mrs. Waddington. "Girls will be girls, I suppose, and they've got to learn for themselves. There, there--you're mussing my work." Kate dropped a kiss on her mother's forehead and vanished up the stairs. Bert Chester, waiting before Zinkand's an hour later, picked her a block away from the nooning crowd. Before he recognized the olive-green tailor suit which he had come to know, he noticed the firm yet gracile move of her. As she came nearer, he was aware of two loungers waiting, like himself, to keep appointments. He caught this exchange from them: "Who? The girl in a kind of brownish green?" "Yes. Isn't she a peach?" Just then, it seemed to him, did the purely physical charm of her burst upon him for the first time. Supple and swaying, yet plump and round; her head set square with some of a man's strength, on exquisitely sloping shoulders: and the taste--he would have called it so--of her dress! A discriminating woman might have noticed that her costume bordered on ostentatious unostentation. For it was designed in every detail to frame the picture, to set off not only that figure but also the cream of her skin, the tawny hair, even those firm, plump hands.