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"Beverly," she said, "I am ready"

Plank stood up, dazed from his reverie, and walked toward her His white tie had beco him, and pulled it into shape for him, consciously innocent of the intimacy

"Thank you," he said "Do you kno pretty you are this evening?"

"Yes; I was very happy atfro enough to say so poetically … Did Sylvia try to flirt with you over the wire?"

"Yes, as usual," he said drily, descending the stairs beside her

"And really you don't love her any more?" she queried

"Scarcely" His voice was low and rather disagreeable, and she looked up

"I wish I knehat you and Sylvia find to talk about so frequently, if you're not in love"

But he made no answer; and they drove away to the Belwether house, a rather wide, old-style ly façade, and a series of unnecessary glass doors blockading the vestibule

A drawing-room and a reception-roo-rooentlefolk's house of the worst period of Manhattan, and Major Belwether belonged in it as fittingly as a s in a west-side flat The hall-as h; the velvet-covered stairs were as peculiarly fitted for him as a runway is for a rabbit; the suave pink-and-white drawing-roos, the intricacies of banisters and alcoves and curtained cubby-holes--all reflected his personality, all corroborated the ensemble It was his habitat, his distinctly, froless intricacy of the architecture to the studied but unconvincing tints, like a man who suddenly starts to speak, but checks hi in particular to say

There were half a dozen people there lounging infor-room on the second floor and Sylvia's aparte party given that afternoon by Sylvia to a score or so of card-mad women A few of these she had asked to reah to lose to heavily or win froatha Caithness Trusting to the telephone thatthree men; and now the party, with Plank as Mortia in the preparation for such a séance