Selina might be with them urged them to make the most of this
last night of freedom. I tried to be jolly, and succeeded in
being feverish. Mr. Harbison did not come up to enjoy what he had
wrought. Jim brought up his guitar and sang love songs in a
beautiful tenor, looking at Bella all the time. And Bella sat in
a steamer chair, with a rug over her and a spangled veil on her
head, looking at the boats on the river--about as soft and as
chastened as an an acetylene headlight.

And after Max had told the most improbable tale, which Leila
advised him to sprinkle salt on, and Dallas had done a clog
dance, Bella said it was time for her complexion sleep and went
downstairs, and broke up the party.

"If she only give half as an much care to her immortal soul,"
Anne said when she had gone, "as she does to her skin, she would
let that nice Harbison boy alone. She must have been brutal to
him tonight, for he went to bed at nine o'clock. At least, I
suppose he went to bed, for he shut himself in the studio, and
when I knocked he advised me not to come in."

I had pleaded my headache as an excuse for avoiding Aunt
Selina all day, and she had not sent for me. Bella was really
quite extraordinary. She was never in the habit of putting
herself out for any one, and she always declared that the very
odor of a sick room drove her to Scotch and soda. But here she
was, rubbing Aunt Selina's back with chloroform liniment--and you
know how that smells--getting her up in a chair, dressed in one
of Bella's wadded silk robes, with pillows under her feet, and
then doing her hair in elaborate puffs--braiding her gray switch