Sperry held up his hand.

"Absolutely not," he said, gravely. "She is coming in my car. She
doesn't know to what house or whose. She knows none of you. She
is a stranger to the city, and she will not even recognize the
neighborhood."



II


The butler wheeled out Mrs. Dane's chair, as her companion did not
dine with her on club nights, and led us to the drawing-room doors.
There Sperry threw them, open, and we saw that the room had been
completely metamorphosed.

Mrs. Dane's drawing-room is generally rather painful. Kindly soul
that she is, she has considered it necessary to preserve and exhibit
there the many gifts of a long lifetime. Photographs long outgrown,
onyx tables, a clutter of odd chairs and groups of discordant
bric-a-brac usually make the progress of her chair through it a
precarious and perilous matter. We paused in the doorway, startled.

The room had been dismantled. It opened before us, walls and
chimney-piece bare, rugs gone from the floor, even curtains taken
from the windows. To emphasize the change, in the center stood a
common pine table, surrounded by seven plain chairs. All the
lights were out save one, a corner bracket, which was screened with
a red-paper shade.