There was something amiss in the pretty little room.  There were shadows seated around that pretty little table a quatre, beside the guests in their pretty dresses and their black coats; silent cold shadows, who ate nothing, while they chilled the dainty food and took the sweetness from the succulent dishes.  These shadows had crept in unawares, a silent partie carree, to take their phantom places at the table, and only Etta seemed able to jostle hers aside and talk it down.  She took the whole burden of the conversation upon her pretty shoulders, and bore it through the little banquet with unerring skill and unflinching good humor.  In the midst of her merriest laughter, the clever gray eyes would flit from one man’s face to the other.  Paul had been brought here to ask her to marry him.  Claude de Chauxville had been invited that he might be tacitly presented to his successful rival.  Maggie was there because she was a woman and made the necessary fourth.  Puppets all, and two of them knew it.  And some of us know it all our lives.  We are living, moving puppets.  We let ourselves be dragged here and pushed there, the victim of one who happens to have more energy of mind, a greater steadfastness of purpose, a keener grasp of the situation called life.  We smirk and smile, and lose the game because we have begun by being anvils, and are afraid of trying to be hammers.

But Etta Sydney Bamborough had to deal with metal of a harder grain than the majority of us.  Claude de Chauxville was for the moment forced to assume the humble role of anvil because he had no choice.  Maggie Delafield was passive for the time being, because that which would make her active was no more than a tiny seedling in her heart.  The girl bid fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen slowly, like the best fruit.

During the drive to the opera house the two women in Etta’s snug little brougham were silent.  Etta had her thoughts to occupy her.  She was at the crucial point of a difficult game.  She could not afford to allow even a friend to see so much as the corners of the cards she held.

In the luxurious box it was easily enough arranged—­Etta and Paul together in front, De Chauxville and Maggie at the other corner of the box.

“I have asked my friend Karl Steinmetz to come in during the evening,” said Paul to Etta when they were seated.  “He is anxious to make your acquaintance.  He is my—­prime minister over in Russia.”

Etta smiled graciously.

“It is kind of him,” she answered, “to be anxious to make my acquaintance.”

She was apparently listening to the music; in reality she was hurrying back mentally over half a dozen years.  She had never had much to do with the stout German philosopher, but she knew enough of him to scorn the faint hope that he might have forgotten her name and her individuality.  Etta Bamborough had never been disconcerted in her life yet; this incident came very near to bringing about the catastrophe.