None of them said anything in particular until the mixture in the glasses had sunk about half-way down. Then Mr. Piper remarked in a pleasant voice, “I don't often permit myself--seldom even before the country adopted prohibition--but the present circumstances seem to be--er--unusual enough--to warrant--” smiled cheerfully and lifted his glass again. When he had set it down he looked at Mrs. Severance, then at Oliver, and then started to speak. Oliver listened with some tenseness, knowing only that whatever he might possibly have imagined might happen, what would happen, to judge from the previous events of the evening, would be undoubtedly so entirely different that prophecy was no use at all. But, even so, he was not entirely prepared for the unexpectedness of Mr. Piper's first sentence. “I feel that I owe you very considerable apologies, Oliver,” the President of the Commercial began with a good deal of stateliness. “In fact I really owe you so many that it leaves me at rather a loss 'as to just how to begin.” He smiled a little shyly. “Rose has explained everything,” he said, and Oliver looked at Mrs. Severance with stupefied wonder--_how?_ “But even so, there remains the difficulty--of my putting myself into words.” “Silly boy,” said Mrs. Severance easily, and Oliver noted with fresh amazement that the term seemed to come from her as naturally and almost conventionally as if she had every legal American right to use it. “Let me, dear.” And Oliver felt his head begin to go round like a pinwheel. But then--but she really _couldn't_ be married to Mr. Piper--and yet somehow she seemed so much more married to him than Mrs. Piper ever had been--Oliver's thoughts played fantastically for an instant over the proposition that she and Mr. Piper had been secretly converted to Mohammedanism together and he looked at Mr. Piper's grey head almost as if he expected to see a large red fez suddenly drop down upon it from the ceiling. “No, Rose,” and again Mr. Piper's voice was stately. “This is my--difficulty. No matter how hard it may be.” “Of course I did not understand--how could I?--that Rose--was such a very good friend of your sister's and all your family's. Rose had told me something about it, I believe--but I was so--foolishly disturbed--when I came in--that really, I--well I must admit that even if I had seen you when I first came in that would hardly have been the thought uppermost in my mind at the time.” He spoke in the same tone of kindly reproof toward himself that he would have used if business worries had made him commit a small but definite act of inhospitality toward one of his guests.