She bit her lip, a sudden color refuting his charge. “I am very well,” she replied coldly; “I danced until two o’clock this morning; at eleven I received a delegation of Wicklow’s jackdaws; at two I lunched with Madame de Caillou--she is so diplomatic that she only discusses generalities and parrots; she has three--M. de Caillou not included; he belongs to the poodle class. At four I came here with Mrs. O’Neal and Lily Osborne; I give a dinner to-night and then go to the opera. It is much the same to-morrow. Have you a cigarette, William?” He opened his case and she selected one and lit it; Fox was not smoking. “I presume that it will be in the newspapers to-morrow that I was seen with a cigarette on the terrace talking to the next President,” she remarked dryly; “I mean you to be the candidate,” she added, “Wicklow is playing for it but--” she laughed, blowing the cigarette smoke into rings before her face. “He will probably be nominated,” Fox rejoined easily; “he has a large following; I shall like to see you in that rôle, Margaret.” “To see me?” she shrugged her shoulders; “my dear William, do you happen to know what Lily Osborne is doing?” He laughed. “Ask me something easier!” Margaret stopped in her promenade and looked out over the city; it seemed to float in a golden mirage, all commonplaceness, all familiarity lost in the radiance of the western sky, against which, here and there, a cross-crowned spire thrust its slender, tapering height, or a campanile rose, dark and sharply pictured, above shining roofs. Far off the bells were ringing, sweetly and insistently, an evening chime. “She is using Wicklow to attain her ends,” Margaret said, a little mocking smile on her pale face; “he is dull and infatuated. I am told she’s in Russian employ and there is information, plenty of it, in his reach. You mark my words, she’ll ruin him--he’ll never be a candidate.” Fox frowned. “Pardon me,” he said abruptly; “I cannot listen.” She tossed her cigarette over the terrace and watched it descend, a mere spark in the dusk below, where evening lay in purple shadows. “Forgive me,” she returned lightly, “I forgot--men are such conscientious creatures and I--I’m an unscrupulous wretch, but I’m not cruel, William!” “Nor I!” he replied, with a slight change of color, “but, Margaret, can’t you see how impossible--” She laughed bitterly. “I’m very dull,” she remarked. A shuddering recognition of some new, terrible barrier between them tore her heart. She held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said in a low voice, “I’m going to ask you to dine again--will you come?” her feverishly glowing eyes fixed themselves on his face. Fox colored again, conscious that he must seem an ill-mannered brute. “Of course I’ll come,” he assented, vexed at himself and touched by the sudden sweetness of her manner.