She waited in her favorite place with her beautiful straight back to the fireplace, both elbows on the low mantel board and one foot on the fender. Her face was as white as a candle, her large violet eyes were filled with grim amusement, and her wide, full-lipped mouth was a little twisted. She wore a frock that was the color of seaweed, cut almost up to her knees, with short sleeves, a loose belt, and a great blob of jade attached to a thin gold chain lying between her breasts. Her thick, wiry hair was out of curl and fell straight, like that of a page in the Court of Cesare Borgia. For all her modernity there was something about her that was peculiarly medieval, masculinely girlish rather than effeminately boyish. She might have been the leading member of a famous troupe of Russian ballet dancers, ready at a moment’s notice to slip out of her wrapper and spring with athletic grace high into the air. Her first remark upon Georgie’s lazy entrance was Feoistic and disconcerting. “So I’m over, I see,” she said, and waited ironically for its effect. Not honest enough to say, “Yes, you are,” Georgie hedged, with some little confusion. “What makes you think so, Feo?” “Your infernal rudeness, my dear, which you wouldn’t have dared to indulge in a week ago. You’ve all sensed the fact that I’m sick to tears of the games I’ve led you into, and would gladly have gone in for babies if I’d had the luck to seem desirable to the right man.” She made a long arm and rang the bell. “I am ripe for repentance, you see, or perhaps it might be more accurate, though less dramatic, to say eager for a new sensation. It isn’t coming off, but you can all go and hang yourselves so far as I’m concerned. I’m out. I’m going to continue to be serious. Bring lunch in here,” she added, as a footman framed himself in the doorway, “quickly. I’m starving.” Almost any other girl who had been the favorite of such a woman as Feo would have found in this renunciation of leadership something to cause emotion. Mere gratitude for many favors and much kindness seemed to demand that. But this young phlegmatic thing was just as unmoved as she had been on receipt of the various war office telegrams officially regretting the deaths of Lord Clayburgh, Captain Graham Macoover, and Sir Harry Pytchley. She lit the inevitable cigarette, chose the much-cushioned divan, and stretched herself at full length. “I can do with a little groundsel too,” she said, as though the other subject had been threshed out.