The doorbell rang, one long and one short tap.  “That’s Jerry’s ring,” said Mrs. Draper composedly, as though she had been speaking of her husband.  In an instant the heavy portieres were flung back by a vigorous arm, and a very tall, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven young man, in a well-tailored brown suit, stepped in.  He accosted his hostess with easy assurance, but went through his introduction to Sylvia in a rather awkward silence.

“Now we’ll have tea,” said Mrs. Draper at once, pressing a button.  In a moment a maid brought in a tray shining with silver and porcelain, set it down on the table in front of Mrs. Draper, and then wheeled in a little circular table with shelves, a glorified edition in gleaming mahogany of the homely, white-painted wheeled-tray of Sylvia’s home.  On the shelves was a large assortment of delicate, small cakes and paper-thin sandwiches.  While she poured out the amber-colored tea into the translucent cups, Mrs. Draper kept up with the new-comer a lively monologue of personalities, in which Sylvia, for very ignorance of the people involved, could take no part.  She sat silent, watching with concentration the two people before her, the singularly handsome man, certainly the handsomest man she had ever seen, and the far from handsome but singularly alluring woman who faced him, making such a display of her two good points, her rich figure and her fine dark eyes, that for an instant the rest of her person seemed non-existent.

“How do you like your tea, dear?” The mistress of the house brought her stranded guest back into the current of talk with this well-worn hook.

“Oh, it doesn’t make any difference,” said Sylvia, who, as it happened, did not like the taste of tea.

“You really ought to have it nectar; with whipped ambrosia on top.”  Mrs. Draper troweled this statement on with a dashing smear, saving Sylvia from being forced to answer, by adding lightly to the man, “Is ambrosia anything that will whip, do you suppose?”

“Never heard of it before,” he answered, breaking his silence with a carefree absence of shame at his confession of ignorance.  “Sounds like one of those labels on a soda-water fountain that nobody ever samples.”

Mrs. Draper made a humorously exaggerated gesture of despair and turned to Sylvia.  “Well, it’s just as well, my dear, that you should know at the very beginning what a perfect monster of illiteracy he is!  You needn’t expect anything from him but his stupid good-looks, and money and fascination.  Otherwise he’s a Cave-Man for ignorance.  You must take him in hand!” She turned back to the man.  “Sylvia, you know, is as clever as she is beautiful.  She had the highest rank but three in her class last year.”

Sylvia was overcome with astonishment by this knowledge of a fact which had seemed to make no impression on the world of the year before.  “Why, how could you know that!” she cried.