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Rh dinner was gay. Alice made up a little party on the spur of the moment. One of the men was Jack Fairfax. They went to a theatre and ended with supper at a restaurant, prolonged into the early hours of the morning. Teresa threw herself into the rather boisterous merriment of the occasion; her gaiety had a sharper, harder edge than of old. Fairfax talked to her and watched her with reawakened and growing interest. She talked to him as though she found him interesting; and before they parted it had been arranged that he was to motor out with Alice on the next day but one and lunch at Teresa's house.

That luncheon was also boisterous, owing, as Teresa now perceived, to Alice's new atmosphere. Alice had quite done being æsthetic. She was living now with smarter people, and she was conscientiously playing at being fast, as she had before played at being artistic. She drank two cocktails before luncheon, and during the meal alternately chaffed Basil and made eyes at him. Basil returned the chaff and the eyes with interest and rather brutally. Alice was beautifully dressed; Basil, with the frankness of a student of the human form, admired her figure, and received on the spot a request to paint her portrait.

"Only in town, you know," she said. "I can't come out to this dreary place. Why on earth do you stay here? Only a pair of turtle-doves like you two could stand it."