She stood for a moment, sipping at the long, cool glass and listening to hear Miss Bennett's footsteps growing more and more distant; listening, too, for a footstep in the street. In the drawing-room the firelight was already leaping up, outdoing the light of the shaded lamps. Left alone, Lydia slipped off her opera cloak very softly, as if she did not want to make the smallest noise that would interfere with her listening. The house was quiet, and even the noise of the city was beginning to die down. The steady roar of traffic returning from the theater was almost over. Now and then she could hear a Fifth Avenue bus rolling along on its heavy rubber tires; now and then the slamming of a motor door as some of her neighbors returned from an evening's amusement. She bent over the fire trying to warm her hands. They were like ice, and it must have been from cold, not excitement, she thought, for her mind felt as calm as a well. She turned the little clock--all lilac enamel and rhinestones--so that she could watch it's tiny face. It was a quarter to twelve. She clenched her hands. Did he intend to keep her waiting? She started, for the door had softly opened. Miss Bennett entered in one of her gorgeous dressing gowns of crimson satin and bright-blue birds. "Dear child," she said, "you ought to be in bed." "I'm waiting for someone who's coming to see me, Benny; and as he may be here at any minute, and I don't suppose you want to be caught in your present costume----" Miss Bennett lifted her shoulders. "Oh, at my age!" she said. "After all, what is the use of having lovely dressing gowns if no one ever sees them?" "It's Dan O'Bannon that's coming," said Lydia, "and I want to see him alone." "O'Bannon coming here! But, Lydia, you can't see him alone--at this hour. Why, it's midnight!" Miss Bennett's eyes clung to her. "Eleven minutes to," said Lydia, with her eyes on the clock. "I wish you'd go, Benny." Miss Bennett hesitated. "I don't think you ought to see him alone. I don't think it's quite--quite nice." "Oh, this is going to be very nice!" "No, I mean I don't think it's safe. Suppose anything should happen." "Should happen?" said Lydia, and for a moment she looked like the old haughty Lydia. "What could happen?" Miss Bennett raised both her arms and let them drop with a gesture quite French, expressing that they both knew what men were. "He might try to make love to you," she said. The minute she had spoken she wished she had not, for Lydia's fine dark brow contracted. "What disgusting ideas you do have Benny! That man!" She stopped herself. "I almost wish he would. If he did I think I should kill him." To Miss Bennett this seemed just an expression; but to Lydia, with her eyes fixed on an enormous pair of steel-and-silver scissors that lay on the writing table, it was something more than a phrase. Miss Bennett decided to withdraw.