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 "That wasn't up at all. But you've—" her finger-tips quivered on his cheek—"you've found somebody."

"Nobody," he denied.

She cast off his arms and arose. "I didn't think you'd stay in this suite, Jay," she said. "I only wanted you to take it for me. I'll keep it on, you see.'m not going home. I'll have my own place; nobody'll be over me. I'm married, you see—Mrs. Jay Rountree."

She walked to the window which overlooked the park, patterned with shadows from the sun lying far and low in the west. She spun about, head up, fired with a flash of jealousy.

"What sort is she, Jay? Not mine, I know; but what—what gets you?"

She made him see, so clearly, Ellen: Ellen beside him, Ellen speaking to him, her eyes in his. She made him see Ellen, suddenly, as at that first time she cried because of him, in his father's big chair with her toes not quite touching the floor; and, amazingly, this memory affected him beyond any measure with the moment itself. But it was nothing he could relate to Lida.

He remained in New York until the end of the week, putting in appearances with Lida wherever she wished, and he looked up Ken Howarth's cousin, not by making a call at the Howarth office, but under midnight circumstances which permitted the casual introduction of Ralph, with no need to mention even that Ralph was in business.

"Precisely perfect!" Ralph exulted with Jay on the next day. "Now we have a chance to get them, if we simply don't rush them! If we try to hurry this, no chance; but if we play it properly and patiently, the sweetest business