It was not until after he had knocked that he realized with a shock of disappointment that Joan was not alone. He could hear her talking to somebody, then she moved across the room and pulled the door open. He saw only her first of all, his eyes sought hers and stayed there. He could notice that she seemed very pale, and almost frightened looking, and that she had dressed for the afternoon in black. Some long clinging stuff, and up near where the blouse opened at the neck she had pinned in one red rose, its warm and velvety petals lying against the white of her neck. The room seemed full of the scent of the roses too, and a little oppressive. Dick held his breath as he looked at her; to him she seemed so beautiful as to be almost amazing; then he came a little further into the room and his eyes took in the other occupant. A man sat, or rather lounged, on the sofa, pulled up under the window. He was watching the meeting with curious eyes, and in his hands he held another rose, the same sort as the one Joan wore. When Dick's eyes met his, he smiled, and laying the rose aside, stood up. "Did not know it was to be a tea-party, Pierrette," he said, "you ought to have warned me." Joan had shut the door and moved forward into the centre of the room. She was evidently very nervous over something; Landon was more than a little amused, though also inclined to be annoyed. "Oh, it isn't a tea-party," she was saying. "It's just us three. Doctor Grant, this is Mr. Landon. Will you have this chair?--it is really the only one which is quite safe to sit on." Dick took the proffered chair stiffly; he was conscious of a bitter sense of disappointment, tinged with disapproval. It was, of course, different for himself, but he loathed to see the other man so much at home in this quaint little dust-laden attic where Joan lived. Her bed stood against the wall, a black counterpane of sorts thrown across it; her brush and comb, the little silver things for her dressing-table were scattered about on the top of the chest of drawers standing near. The place would have been sacred to him; but how did this other man look at it? And why had Joan asked him? Was it a deliberate attempt to shield herself from something she dreaded? or did it mean that, after all, she had only been playing with him--that the fluttered surrender of her lips had been but a flirt's last fling in the game of passion? If a man is really very much in love, as was Dick, and something occurs to make him lose his temper, it is sure to end in rapid and sometimes lasting disaster. After the first five minutes Dick made no attempt even to be polite to Landon. Rage, blind, merciless rage, and a sense of having made a damned fool of himself, throbbed in his mind as he watched Joan talking to the other man, and saw the evident familiarity which lay between them. Yet he could not get up and go away; he would not leave her, not till he had hurt her as much as she was now hurting him.