ascending a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a
gas-lit hall. Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square,
he remarked that old Mr. du Lac was calling on his
cousins the Dagonets, and turning down the corner of
West Tenth Street he saw Mr. Skipworth, of his own
firm, obviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings.
A little farther up Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on
his doorstep, darkly projected against a blaze of light,
descended to his private brougham, and rolled away to
a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination.
It was not an Opera night, and no one was giving a
party, so that Beaufort's outing was undoubtedly of a
clandestine nature. Archer connected it in his mind
with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue in which
beribboned window curtains and flower-boxes had
recently appeared, and before whose newly painted door
the canary-coloured brougham of Miss Fanny Ring
was frequently seen to wait.

Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which
composed Mrs. Archer's world lay the almost unmapped
quarter inhabited by artists, musicians and "people
who wrote." These scattered fragments of humanity
had never shown any desire to be amalgamated with
the social structure. In spite of odd ways they were said
to be, for the most part, quite respectable; but they
preferred to keep to themselves. Medora Manson, in
her prosperous days, had inaugurated a "literary
salon"; but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance
of the literary to frequent it.