“Oh, damn!” ejaculated Alan Mortimer, and immediately directed an apologetic murmur toward Sybil. He got up, and walking with surprising steadiness and that lithe, animal grace so characteristic of him, made his way toward a table where a woman sat waiting with an expectant face. “Grace Templeton!” exclaimed Kitty under her breath. Her brown eyes snapped angrily. “I didn’t see her before—did you, Mr. Dukane?” “I saw her when I first came in,” answered the manager quietly. “That hair is so conspicuous. Really I think she should begin to confine herself to adventuress parts. She is no longer the romantic type.” “_And_ the dress!” Kitty shivered with a delicate suggestion of jarred nerves or outraged taste. Dukane dropped his eyes to hide the twinkle in them. It was true that even in that lunch-time Broadway assemblage, in which brilliant color combinations in the way both of hair and of garments proclaimed right and left the daring and the resourcefulness of womankind, Miss Templeton was a unique figure. Her hair was of a magnificent metallic gold, and a certain smoldering fire in her black-fringed gray eyes and a general impression she gave of violent and but half-controlled emotions saved her beauty from being merely cheap and artificial and made it vivid and compelling. A passionate, unforgettable woman, and her gown, sensational as it was, somehow expressed her. The French waiter had drawn upon his fund of native tact in calling it mauve. It was, as a matter of fact, a sharp and thunderous purple—the sort of color which is only permissible in stained glass or an illuminated tenth century missal. It was a superb shade, but utterly impossible for any sort of modern clothes. It blazed insolently against the massed greenery of the restaurant window. A persistent ray of yellow August sunshine, pushing its way past the cunningly contrived leafy screen, fell full upon it and upon the burnished golden hair above it. In that celestial spotlight Miss Templeton was almost too dazzling for unshaded mortal eyes. Now, as she sat looking up at Mortimer, who stood beside her table, her expression was in keeping with the gown and the hair. It was violent, conspicuous, crudely intense. Alan Mortimer’s expression, in its way, was as violent as hers. They looked, the two of them, as though they could have torn each other’s eyes out with fierce and complete satisfaction. “Am I very late, Mr. Dukane?” said an agreeably pitched voice just behind Sybil. Dukane started and raised his eyes. His face brightened. “Barrison, my dear fellow, I am glad you came! Do you know, you were so late that I had almost forgotten you! Miss Legaye, let me present Mr. Barrison; Miss Merivale, Mr. Barrison.” The newcomer smiled and sat down at the already crowded little table. “If you say you had forgotten me,” he protested, “I shall think you did not really need me at all, and that would be a hard blow to my vanity.”