Mrs. Ingram’s colour faded quickly, as it always did, but she forced a nervous smile. “I’d no idea it was so late.”

            “Well, if your watch has stopped, there’s the hall clock right in front of you,” said Miss Wilpert, with quick panting breaths between the words. She waited a moment. “Are you coming?”

            Mrs. Ingram leaned back in her deep armchair. “Well, no—I don’t believe I am.”

            “You’re not!”

            “No. I think I like it better here.”

            “But you must be crazy! You asked that Italian Countess to keep us two seats next to hers—”

            “Well, you can go and ask her to excuse me—say I’m tired. The ball-room’s always so hot.”

            “Land’s sake! How’m I going to tell her all that in Italian? You know she don’t speak a word of English. She’ll think it’s pretty funny if you don’t come; and so will the others. You always say you hate to have people talk about you; and yet here you sit, stowed away in this dark corner, like a school-girl with her boy friend at a Commencement dance—”

            Mrs. Ingram stood up quickly. “Cassie, I’m afraid you must have been losing at bridge. I never heard you talk so foolishly. But of course I’ll come if you think the Countess expects us.” She turned to me with a little smile, and suddenly, shyly, held out her hand. “You’ll tell me the rest tomorrow morning,” she said, looking straight at me for an instant; then she turned and followed Cassie Wilpert.

            I stood watching them with a thumping heart. I didn’t know what held these women together, but I felt that in the last few minutes a link of the chain between them had been loosened, and I could hardly wait to see it snap.

            I was still standing there when the man who had attracted Mrs. Ingram’s notice came out of the bar, and walked toward me; and I saw that it was in fact my old acquaintance Jimmy Shreve, the bright particular ornament of the Evening Star. We had not met for a year or more, and his surprise at the encounter was as great as mine. “Funny, coming across you in this jazz crowd. I’m here to get away from my newspaper; but what has brought you?”

            I explained that I had been ill the previous year, and, by the doctor’s orders, was working out in the Alps the last months of my convalescence; and he listened with the absent-minded sympathy which one’s friends give to one’s ailments, particularly when they are on the mend.

            “Well—well—too bad you’ve had such a mean time. Glad you’re out of it now, anyway,” he muttered, snapping a reluctant cigarette-lighter, and finally having recourse to mine. As he bent over it he said suddenly: “Well, what about Kate Spain?”

            I looked at him in bewilderment. For a moment the question was so unintelligible that I wondered if he too were a sufferer, and had been sent to the heights for medical reasons; but his sharp little professional eyes burned with a steady spark of curiosity as he took a close-up of me across the lighter. And then I understood; at least I understood the allusion, though its relevance escaped me.

            “Kate Spain? Oh, you mean that murder trial at Cayuga? You got me a card for it, didn’t you? But I wasn’t able to go.”

            “I remember. But you’ve made up for it since, I see.” He continued to twinkle at me meaningly; but I was still groping. “What do you think of her?” he repeated.

            “Think of her? Why on earth should I think of her at all?”

            He drew back and squared his sturdy shoulders in evident enjoyment. “Why, because you’ve been talking to her as hard as you could for the last two hours,” he chuckled.

            I stood looking at him blankly. Again it occurred to me that under his tight journalistic mask something had loosened and gone adrift. But I looked at the steadiness of the stumpy fingers which held his cigarette. The man had himself under perfect control.

            “Kate Spain?” I said, collecting myself. “Does that lady I was talking to really look to you like a murderess?”

            Shreve made a dubious gesture. “I’m not so sure what murderesses look like. But, as it happens, Kate Spain was acquitted.”

            “So she was. Still, I don’t think I’ll tell Mrs.