She pushed a chair up to the tea-table and Mrs. Struthers
sank into it delectably. "Of course I shall be too
happy to come."

"That's all right, my dear. And bring your young
gentleman with you." Mrs. Struthers extended a hail-
fellow hand to Archer. "I can't put a name to you--but
I'm sure I've met you--I've met everybody, here, or in
Paris or London. Aren't you in diplomacy? All the
diplomatists come to me. You like music too? Duke,
you must be sure to bring him."

The Duke said "Rather" from the depths of his
beard, and Archer withdrew with a stiffly circular bow
that made him feel as full of spine as a self-conscious
school-boy among careless and unnoticing elders.

He was not sorry for the denouement of his visit:
he only wished it had come sooner, and spared him a
certain waste of emotion. As he went out into the
wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent,
and May Welland the loveliest woman in it. He
turned into his florist's to send her the daily box of
lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion, he found he
had forgotten that morning.

As he wrote a word on his card and waited for an
envelope he glanced about the embowered shop, and
his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses. He had never
seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse