Bowditch to Mrs. Whittaker; "but it's all nonsense--this talk
about her being no more fun! She's more fun than ever!"

"She's prettier than ever," Gertrude Whittaker said with a sigh.

The next afternoon, a dreary, wet afternoon, at about four
o'clock, Warren Gregory stepped out of the elevator, and quietly
admitted himself to his own hallway with a latchkey. It was an
unusual hour for the doctor to come home, and in the butler's
carefully commonplace tone as he answered a few questions Warren
knew that he knew.

The awning had been stretched across the sidewalk, caterers' men
were in possession, the lovely spacious rooms were full of
flowers; the big studio had been emptied of furniture, there were
great palms massed in the musicians' corner; maids were quietly
busy everywhere; no eye met the glance of the man of the house as
he went upstairs.

He found Mrs. Gregory alone in her own luxurious room. No one who
had seen her in the excited beauty of the night before would have
been likely to recognize her now. She was pale, tense, and visibly
nervous, wrapped in a great woolly robe, as if she were cold, and
with her hair bound carelessly and tightly back as a woman binds
it for bathing.

"You've seen it?" she said instantly, as her husband came in.

"George called my attention to it; I came straight home. I knew"--
he was kneeling beside her, one arm about her, all his tenderness