"Are you joking?" Nina demanded.

"Joking? Of course not."

Nina sat down again on the bed, her eyes on her sister, curious and not a little apprehensive.

"It's the first time it's ever happened, to my knowledge," she declared.

"I know he's avoided me like poison. I thought he hated women. You know Clare Rossiter is--"

Elizabeth turned suddenly.

"Clare is ridiculous," she said. "She hasn't any reserve, or dignity, or anything else. And I don't see what my going to the theater with d.i.c.k Livingstone has to do with her anyhow."

Nina raised her carefully plucked eyebrows.

"Really!" she said. "You needn't jump down my throat, you know." She considered, her eyes on her sister. "Don't go and throw yourself away on d.i.c.k Livingstone, Sis. You're too good-looking, and he hasn't a cent. A suburban practice, out all night, that tumble-down old house and two old people hung around your necks, for Doctor David is letting go pretty fast. It just won't do. Besides, there's a story going the rounds about him, that--"

"I don't want to hear it, if you don't mind."

She went to the door and opened it.

"I've hardly spoken a dozen words to him in my life. But just remember this. When I do find the man I want to marry, I shall make up my own mind. As you did," she added as a parting shot.

She was rather sorry as she went down the stairs. She had begun to suspect what the family had never guessed, that Nina was not very happy.

More and more she saw in Nina's pa.s.sion for clothes and gaiety, for small possessions, an attempt to subst.i.tute them for real things. She even suspected that sometimes Nina was a little lonely.

Wallie Sayre rose from a deep chair as she entered the living-room.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, "I was on the point of asking Central to give me this number so I could get you on the upstairs telephone."

"Nina and I were talking. I'm sorry."

Wallie, in spite of Walter Wheeler's opinion of him, was an engaging youth with a wide smile, an air of careless well-being, and an obstinate jaw. What he wanted he went after and generally secured, and Elizabeth, enlightened by Nina, began to have a small anxious feeling that afternoon that what he wanted just now happened to be herself.

"Nina coming down?" he asked.

"I suppose so. Why?"

"You couldn't pa.s.s the word along that you are going to be engaged for the next half hour?"

"I might, but I certainly don't intend to."

"You are as hard to isolate as a--as a germ," he complained. "I gave up a perfectly good golf game to see you, and as your father generally calls the dog the moment I appear and goes for a walk, I thought I might see you alone."

"You're seeing me alone now, you know."

Suddenly he leaned over and catching up her hand, kissed it.

"You're so cool and sweet," he said. "I--I wish you liked me a little."

He smiled up at her, rather wistfully. "I never knew any one quite like you."

She drew her hand away. Something Nina had said, that he knew his way about, came into her mind, and made her uncomfortable. Back of him, suddenly, was that strange and mysterious region where men of his sort lived their furtive man-life, where they knew their way about. She had no curiosity and no interest, but the mere fact of its existence as revealed by Nina repelled her.

"There are plenty like me," she said. "Don't be silly, Wallie. I hate having my hand kissed."

"I wonder," he observed shrewdly, "whether that's really true, or whether you just hate having me do it?"

When Nina came in he was drawing a rough sketch of his new power boat, being built in Florida.

Nina's delay was explained by the appearance, a few minutes later, of a rather sullen Annie with a tea tray. Afternoon tea was not a Wheeler inst.i.tution, but was notoriously a Sayre one. And Nina believed in putting one's best foot foremost, even when that resulted in a state of unstable domestic equilibrium.

"Put in a word for me, Nina," Wallie begged. "I intend to ask Elizabeth to go to the theater this week, and I think she is going to refuse."

"What's the play?" Nina inquired negligently. She was privately determining that her mother needed a tea cart and a new tea service.

There were some in old Georgian silver--

"'The Valley.' Not that the play matters. It's Beverly Carlysle."

"I thought she was dead, or something."

"Or something is right. She retired years ago, at the top of her success. She was a howling beauty, I'm told. I never saw her. There was some queer story. I've forgotten it. I was a kid then. How about it, Elizabeth?"

"I'm sorry. I'm going Wednesday night."

He looked downcast over that, and he was curious, too. But he made no comment save:

"Well, better luck next time."

"Just imagine," said Nina. "She's going with d.i.c.k Livingstone. Can you imagine it?"

But Wallace Sayre could and did. He had rather a stricken moment, too.

Of course, there might be nothing to it; but on the other hand, there very well might. And Livingstone was the sort to attract the feminine woman; he had gravity and responsibility. He was older too, and that flattered a girl.

"He's not a bit attractive," Nina was saying. "Quiet, and--well, I don't suppose he knows what he's got on."

Wallie was watching Elizabeth.

"Oh, I don't know," he said, with masculine fairness. "He's a good sort, and he's pretty much of a man."

He was quite sure that the look Elizabeth gave him was grateful.

He went soon after that, keeping up an appearance of gaiety to the end, and very careful to hope that Elizabeth would enjoy the play.

"She's a wonder, they say," he said from the doorway. "Take two hankies along, for it's got more tears than 'East Lynne' and 'The Old Homestead'

put together."

He went out, holding himself very erect and looking very cheerful until he reached the corner. There however he slumped, and it was a rather despondent young man who stood sometime later, on the center of the deserted bridge over the small river, and surveyed the water with moody eyes.

In the dusky living-room Nina was speaking her mind.