down irresolutely.

"Everything's exceptional--in that quarter," said Doris, in the same
tone. "Oh, go, of course!--it would be a thousand pities not to go."

Meadows at once took her at her word. That was the first of a series of
"male" dinners, to which, however, it seemed to Doris, if one might
judge from Arthur's accounts, that a good many female exceptions were
admitted, no doubt by way of proving the rule. And during July, Meadows
lunched in town--in the lofty regions of St. James's or Mayfair--with
other enthusiastic women admirers, most of them endowed with long purses
and long pedigrees, at least three or four times a week. Doris was
occasionally asked and sometimes went. But she was suffering all the
time from an initial discouragement and depression, which took away
self-reliance, and left her awkwardly conscious. She struggled, but in
vain. The world into which Arthur was being so suddenly swept was
strange to her, and in many ways antipathetic; but had she been happy
and in spirits she could have grappled with it, or rather she could have
lost herself in Arthur's success. Had she not always been his slave?
But she was not happy! In their obscure days she had been Arthur's best
friend, as well as his wife. And it was the old comradeship which was
failing her; encroached upon, filched from her, by other women; and
especially by this exacting, absorbing woman, whose craze for Arthur
Meadows's society was rapidly becoming an amusement and a scandal even
to those well acquainted with her previous records of the same sort.

* * * * *

The end of July arrived. The Dunstables left town. At a concert, for
which she had herself sent them tickets, Lady Dunstable met Doris and