It sounded like the rustle of skirts, the stretching of kid. There was dulness in the atmosphere. Yet if it was dull, Sommers realized that it was his own fault--a conclusion he usually took away with him from the feasts of the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of his opportunities. The ability to cultivate acquaintances, to push his way into a good place in this sleek company of the well-to-do,--an ability characteristically American,--he was utterly without. It would be better for him, he reflected with depression, to return to Marion, Ohio, or some similar side-track of the world, or to reenter the hospital and bury himself in a quite subordinate position. There was still an eddy of guests about the host and his wife near the great portrait. They were laughing loudly. Carson's thin face was beaming. Even Mrs. Carson's face had lost some of its tension. Sommers could watch her manner from his position in the upper hall. She was dismissing a minor guest with a metallic smile. 'To aspire to this!' he murmured unconsciously. 'This, the triumph of success!' "Still waiting?" Miss Hitchcock was passing, her long wrap trailing lightly behind. Her eyes glowed underneath a white mantilla. "I am ready to go now," Sommers replied. "You are too tired for the dance." "I must go--I can't bear to miss anything. It is stupid--but it is exciting at the same time. Good-by. Remember, Lake Forest in a fortnight. And learn to take it easily!" She smiled and disappeared in the wake of Mrs. Porter. How easily she seemed to take it! The man she married would have to be of the world, as large a world as she could contrive to get. She would always be "going on." Imaginatively, with the ignorance of a young man, he attributed to her appetites for luxury, for power, for success. _He_ was merely an instance of her tolerance. Really he was a very little thing in her cosmos, and if he wished to be more, he would have to take an interest in just this. Colonel Hitchcock came out at last, in close conversation with old Blaisdell. They were talking business. Hitchcock's kindly face was furrowed and aged, Sommers noticed. The old merchant put his arm through the young doctor's, and with this support Sommers received the intimate farewell from Mrs. Carson. Colonel Hitchcock ordered the driver to take them to the Metropolitan Club. "Our talk may take us some time," he explained. "I have been trying to find you for several days. I have something to ask you to do for me. You may think it strange that I should go to you instead of to one of my old friends. But it is something Isaac would have done for me. It is for my boy."