“Of course,” Mrs. Braithwaite agreed, sunnily, with only the quickest and sweetest little fling of a glance at her hostess, “I was _sure_ she’d forgive you. Well, at any rate, we’ve both made our peace with her now and established the _entente cordiale_, I hope.” She turned toward her husband and spoke his name gently, in the tone that is none the less a command to the obedient follower: “Leslie.” It was apparently her permission for him to prepare himself for departure; but it may also have been a signal or command for him to do something else;—Mr. Dodge noticed that it brought an oddly plaintive look into the eyes of the small and dark Braithwaite. Throughout the brief but strained interview he had been sitting in one of the Dodges’ rigid chairs as quietly as if he had been a well-behaved little son of Mrs. Braithwaite’s, brought along to make a call upon grown people. He was slender as well as short; of a delicate, almost fragile, appearance; and in company habitually so silent, so self-obliterative that it might well have been a matter of doubt whether he was profoundly secretive or of an overwhelming timidity. But as he sat in the Dodges’ slim black chair, himself rather like that chair, with his trim, thin little black legs primly uncrossed and his small black back straight and stiff, there were suggestions that he was more secretive than timid. Under his eyes were semicircles of darkness, as if part of what he secreted might have been a recent anguish, either physical or mental. Moreover, if he had been in reality the well-trained little boy his manners during this short evening call had suggested, those semicircles under his eyes would have told of anguish so acute that the little boy had wept. When his wife said “Leslie,” he swallowed; there came into his eyes the odd and plaintive look his host had noticed—it was the look now not of a good little boy but of a good little dog, obedient in a painful task set by the adored master—and he stood up immediately. “We really must be running,” his wife said, rising, too. “This was just our funny little effort to break the ice. I do hope it has, and that you’ll both come in to see us some evening. I _do_ hope you’ll _both_ come.” She put an almost imperceptible stress on the word “both” as she moved toward the door; then said “Leslie” again. He was still standing beside his chair. “Ah—” he said; then paused and coughed. “I—I wonder——” “Yes?” his host said, encouragingly. “I—that is, I was going to say, by the way, I wonder if you happen to know of a good chauffeur, Mr. Dodge.” At this, Mrs. Dodge’s breathing became audible as well as visible, there fell a moment of such silence. “A—a chauffeur? No,” Mr. Dodge said. “No, I don’t think I do. We haven’t one ourselves; we do our own driving. A chauffeur? No. I’m afraid I don’t know of any.”