“I shan’t tell them that,” she said, slowly wrapping her furs about her throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, “but I’ll tell them you say so, if you like.” She was as good as her word--she usually was. When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked without the slightest change of expression: “Would any one like to hear Roland’s explanation of why he is not with us?” “Had it anything to do with his not being asked?” said a pale young man; and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the circle to ascertain how his remark had succeeded. So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact, though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more, he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where she despised she made no secret of the fact. “Not asked, Mr. Wickham!” she said. “I assume my husband is asked wherever I am,” and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a faint smile: “One’s husband is always asked, isn’t he?” “Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come,” said another speaker. This was the other great beauty of the hour--or, since she was blond and some years younger than Mrs. Almar, perhaps it would be right to say that she was the beauty of the hour. She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in her cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine Fenimer had another advantage--she was unmarried. In spite of the truth of the observation that a married woman’s greatest charm is her husband, he is also in the most practical sense a disadvantage; he does sometimes stand across the road of advancement, even in a land of easy divorce. Mrs. Almar, for instance, was regretfully aware that she might have done much better than Roland Almar. The great stakes were really open to the unmarried. She was particularly aware of this fact at the moment, for the party was understood to be awaiting a great stake. Mrs. Ussher had discovered a cousin, a young man who, soon after graduating from a technical college, had invented a process in the manufacture of rubber that had brought him a fortune before he was thirty. He was now engaged in spending it on aviation experiments. He was reckless and successful. Besides which he was understood to be personally attractive--his picture in a silver frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs. Almar admired.