Never before, in all his life, from babyhood up, had he been forced to know the acrid taste of failure, and the dose was not sweetened by his intense consciousness that he was not in any way responsible. No such fiasco had ever resulted from anything he _had_ been responsible for, he thought fiercely to himself, leaning forward smilingly to talk to the president of the street-railway company, who, having nothing in the shape of silverware left before his place but a knife and spoon, was eating his salad with the latter implement. "Lydia has no right to act so," he thought. The hostess gave the effect of flushed, bright-eyed animation usual with her on exciting occasions. "Your wife is a beauty," said the street-railway magnate, looking down the disorganized table toward her. Paul received this assurance with the proper enthusiastic assent, but something else gleamed hotly in his face as he looked at her. "I have _some_ rights," thought the young husband. "Lydia owes me something!" He never before had been moved to pity for himself. Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream. The exhausting efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort of coma of fatigue through which she felt but dully the successive stabs of the ill-served, unsuccessful dinner. At times, the table, the guests, the room itself, wavered before her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance. She did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and eating nothing. She was only conscious of an intense longing for the end of things, and darkness and quiet. After the meal the company moved into the double parlor. The plan had been to serve coffee there, but as people stood about waiting and this did not appear, Paul drew Lydia to one side to ask her about it. She looked at him with bright, blank eyes, and spoke in an expressionless voice: "The grocery boy forgot to deliver the coffee," she said. "There isn't any, I remember now." He turned away silently, and the later part of the entertainment began. There was to be music, one of the guests being Endbury's favorite amateur soprano, another a pianist much thought of. The singer took her place by the piano, assuming carefully the correct position. Lydia watched her balance on the balls of her feet, lean forward a little, throw up her chest and draw in her abdomen. As the preliminary chords of the accompaniment sounded, she was almost visibly concentrating her thoughts on the tension of her vocal chords, on the position of the soft palate and the resonance of the nasal cavities. The thoughts of her auditors followed her own. It came to Lydia some time after the performance was over that the words of the song told of love and life and tragic betrayal. A near-by guest leaned to her and said, during the hand-clapping: "I couldn't make out what it was all about--never can understand a song--but, say! can't she put it all over the soprano that sings in the First Methodist."