“Have this fan, won’t you?” She went on talking: “Harry and I saw you and George Sutton out walking yesterday. We were in the motor, and had stopped up on the Drive to speak to Mr. Girard. He _is_ just the loveliest thing! What a pity he won’t go where there are girls! Harry is quite jealous, though I tell him he needn’t be.” Mrs. Wayne paused with a lovely flush before going on. “You didn’t see us, though we stopped quite near you. My dear, it’s _very_ evident that—” She paused once more, this time with arch significance. “Oh, you needn’t be afraid, I never know anything until I’m told. But George is such a good fellow! I’m sure I ought to know—he was perfectly devoted to me. He’s not the kind girls are apt to take a fancy to, perhaps,—girls are so foolish and romantic,—but he’d be awfully nice to his wife. Harry says he’s a lot richer than anybody knows. And people are so much happier married—the right people, of course.” “Did you have a pleasant time while you were away?” asked Dosia, as she lay back in her low, wide, prettily chintz-covered arm-chair. If she had had some half-defined impulse to confide in Alice Wayne, it was gone, melted away in this too fervid sunshine of approval. She had, instead, one of her accessions of dainty shyness; the ring on her finger, underneath her glove, seemed to burn into her flesh. Her eyes roved warily around the room as Mrs. Wayne talked about her wedding-trip and her husband, folding up her Harry’s neckties as she chattered, her fingers lingering over them with little secret pats. She brought out some of her pretty dresses afterwards for Dosia’s inspection. From the open door of a closet beyond, a pair of shoes was distinctly visible—Harry’s shoes, which the wife laughingly put back into place as she went and closed the door. It was impossible not to see that even those clumsy, monstrously thick-soled things were touched with sentiment for her because the feet of her dearest had worn them. In Dosia’s world so far it was a matter of course that some people were married—their household life went unnoticed, the fact had no relation to her own intangible dreams or hopes; it was a condition inherent to these elders, and not of any particular interest to her. But Alice Wayne had been a girl like herself until now. This matter-of-fact community of living forced itself upon her notice, as if for the first time, as an absolutely new thing. The blood surged up suddenly through the ice of her indifference; the room choked her. George Button’s neckties, not to speak of his shoes——! “I’ll have to be going,” she interrupted precipitately, rising as she spoke. “Why,”—Alice Wayne stopped in the middle of a sentence, looking at her in surprise,—“what’s the matter? Aren’t you well?” “Yes, yes, but I have an appointment,” affirmed Dosia desperately. “I’ve been enjoying it all so much, but I’d forgotten I must go—at once! Good-by.”