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 Sophie forced a smile, and Grover took a vindictive pleasure in the constraint that had arisen between the two women. There were some things after all that Rhoda couldn't organize. He knew Sophie would decline, and for reasons which wouldn't be explained. It was comforting to have even this shred of a secret understanding with her.

"It's sweet of you to ask me," said Sophie, "but I'm afraid I can't. I may take a house for the summer,—then perhaps you'll come to me instead."

Again Rhoda's eyes were studying Grover. It was as though she had come up against an invisible wall. Grover knew he was standing in an unnatural attitude, but he couldn't change it. He felt the frown on his forehead but he couldn't relax it; his nerves and his patience had been stretched too taut.

"Janvier's little playmate is French," said Rhoda with a smile at the recollection. "It's you, standing there like an actor, that made me think of him, though you don't dress half as well."

"Nor 'do' my eyebrows," he retorted.

"After all the famous men she's been accused of," Rhoda reflected, "you'd expect her to produce something more substantial in the way of a bon ami. And how even he, pale weed that he is, can let himself be mawled by an old lion-tamer with vermilion hair and a record that makes Catherine the Great look like a Carmelite nun, is beyond me. Perhaps she sings him to sleep! Hilda called her a cradle-snatcher, where-