be entirely and completely at his ease in this exalted company. More
than once Arnold caught his hostess's eye, and each time he felt,
for some unknown reason, a little thrill of pleasure at the faint
relaxing of her lips, the glance of sympathy which shone across the
roses. Life was a good place, he thought to himself, for these few
hours, at any rate. And then, as he leaned back in his place for a
moment, Ruth's words seemed suddenly traced with a finger of fire
upon the dim wall. To-night was to be a night of mysteries. To-night
the great adventure was to be born. He glanced around the table.
There was, indeed, an air of mystery about some of these guests,
something curiously aloof, something which it was impossible to put
into words. The man Starling, for instance, seemed queerly placed
here. Count Sabatini was another of the guests who seemed somehow to
be outside the little circle. For minutes together he sat sometimes
in grim silence. About him, too, there was always a curious air of
detachment. Rosario was making the small conversation with his
neighbor which the occasion seemed to demand, but he, too, appeared
to talk as one who had more weighty matters troubling his brain. It
was a fancy of Arnold's, perhaps, but it was a fancy of which he
could not rid himself. He glanced towards his employer and a curious
feeling of sympathy stirred him. The man was unhappy and ill at
ease. He had lost his air of slight pomposity, the air with which he
entered his offices in the morning, strutted about the warehouse,
went out to lunch with a customer, and which he somehow seemed to
lose as the time came for returning to his home. Once or twice he
glanced towards his wife, half nervously, half admiringly. Once she
nodded back to him, but it was the nod of one who gathers up her
skirts as she throws alms to a beggar. Then Arnold realized that his
little fit of thoughtfulness had made a material difference to the
hum of conversation. He remembered his duty and leaned over toward