sense of delicate importance, and his clothes were beautiful, a sprig of
rose geranium in a buttonhole and his gloves and boots immaculate. She
liked rather slight graceful men, she thought, with the quiet voices of a
polite ancestry. Naturally Olive Wibird preferred less restrained
companions, although Heaven knew that Olive appeared to make all kinds
welcome. Olive's opinion of Roger Brevard would have been very different
if he had asked her to dance.

Sidsall recalled the quadrille he had led her through at Lacy's party; he
had been a perfect partner, at once light and firm. He had been a
habitual caller at Java Head before that occasion, and had come in the
same manner since. That is, casually viewed, his visits seemed the same;
but in reality there were some small yet significant differences. They
were all held in his attitude of the afternoon when he had stayed talking
exclusively to her on the steps.

She couldn't say just what the change was; when she attempted to examine
it her thoughts became confused and turned to a hundred absurd
considerations, such as--at present--the loveliness of the night. The
scents of the flowers were overwhelming. He got on, too, better than
almost anyone else with her Uncle Gerrit's Manchu wife. She had watched
them together until it had dawned on her that the two had some important
qualities in common--they both appeared to stand a little aside from the
world, as if they were against the wall at a cotillion. She thought this
in spite of the fact that it was precisely what Roger Brevard never did;
it was true in the mysterious way of so much now that came from ideas
over which she had no control.

The subject of Uncle Gerrit's wife--she had not yet been told or decided
for herself what to call her--was inexhaustibly enthralling. But, before