One of the modern dark chintzes had been chosen by the little lady for her curtains and furniture coverings; she also had dared to put cushions of cherry color and of black on the chaise longue, and futurist posters in vivid oranges and greens upon the innocuous drab wall paper. The extreme touches had been made delicately, without vulgarity. Barrison, who had rather good taste himself, smiled as he read in this butterflylike audacity a sort of key to little Miss Kitty’s own personality. She came in almost immediately, and, though Jim had never admired her, he was forced to admit to himself at that moment that she was very charming and quite appealing. The creamy pallor which was always so effective an asset of hers seemed a bit etherealized this morning, whether by a sleepless night or the gray, rainy light. Her dark hair was pulled straight back from her small face, with a rather sweet absence of coquetry; or was it, instead, the very quintessence of coquetry, brought to a fine art? Her big brown eyes were bigger and browner than ever, and her slim, almost childish little figure—which looked so adorable always in its young-girl frocks before the footlights—looked incomparably adorable in a straight, severely cut little white wrapper, like the robe of an early martyr. She came forward to meet them quickly, but quite without embarrassment. “Mr. Barrison!” she exclaimed, rather breathlessly. “What is it? Of course I said I would see you at once. I knew you wouldn’t come without some good reason. What do you want of me?” Her eyes were as clear as the brown pools in a spring brook, and Barrison felt suddenly ashamed of himself and—almost—wroth with Grace Templeton for putting him up to this. “Miss Legaye,” he said, with some hesitation, “I am already calling myself all sorts of names for having aroused you at this unearthly hour. And you were not well, too.” “Oh, that headache!” she said. “That is all gone now! I got to bed early, and had a really decent sleep for once, so I am in good shape this morning! But—what _did_ you want to see me about?” Just as Barrison was trying to find words in which to answer her properly, the maid spoke from the doorway: “You told me to take in the papers, miss, but there’s none there.” Kitty turned in astonishment. “Not there! But they always leave them at eight, and I particularly said that I wanted all of them this morning. That’s funny! Never mind; you can go down to the stand and get them, and Mr. Barrison can tell me what I want to know first of all. Oh, Mr. Barrison, tell me about last night! Did it all go off as well as it seemed to be going when I left?” She looked with honest eagerness into his eyes. Barrison felt most uncomfortable, but he forced himself to say steadily: “Have you really not heard anything about what happened last night, Miss Legaye?”