Herkimer relented before the familiar rush of enthusiasm and questions, and the conversation began on a natural footing.  He looked at Rantoul, aware of the social change that had taken place in him.  The old aggressiveness, the look of the wolf, had gone; about him was an enthusiastic urbanity.  He seemed clean cut, virile, overflowing with vitality, only it was a different vitality, the snap and decision of a man-of-affairs, not the untamed outrush of the artist.

They had spoken scarcely a short five minutes when a knock came on the door and a footman’s voice said: 

“Mrs. Rantoul wishes you not to be late for dinner, sir.”

“Very well, very well,” said Rantoul, with a little impatience.  “I always forget the time.  Jove! it’s good to see you again; you’ll give us a week at least.  Meet you downstairs.”

When Herkimer had dressed and descended, his host and hostess were still up-stairs.  He moved through the rooms, curiously noting the contents of the walls.  There were several paintings of value, a series of drawings by Boucher, a replica or two of his own work; but he sought without success for something from the brush of Clyde Rantoul.  At dinner he was aware of a sudden uneasiness.  Mrs. Rantoul, with the flattering smile that recalled Tina Glover, pressed him with innumerable questions, which he answered with constraint, always aware of the dull simulation of interest in her eyes.

Twice during the meal Rantoul was called to the telephone for a conversation at long distance.

“Clyde is becoming quite a power in Wall Street,” said Mrs. Rantoul, with an approving smile.  “Father says he’s the strength of the younger men.  He has really a genius for organization.”

“It’s a wonderful time, Britt,” said Rantoul, resuming his place.  “There’s nothing like it anywhere on the face of the globe—­the possibilities of concentration and simplification here in business.  It’s a great game, too, matching your wits against another’s.  We’re building empires of trade, order out of chaos.  I’m making an awful lot of money.”

Herkimer remained obstinately silent during the rest of the dinner.  Everything seemed to fetter him—­the constraint of dining before the silent, flitting butler, servants who whisked his plate away before he knew it, the succession of unrecognizable dishes, the constant jargon of social eavesdroppings that Mrs. Rantoul pressed into action the moment her husband’s recollections exiled her from the conversation; but above all, the indefinable enmity that seemed to well out from his hostess, and which he seemed to divine occasionally when the ready smile left her lips and she was forced to listen to things she did not understand.

When they rose from the table, Rantoul passed his arm about his wife and said something in her ear, at which she smiled and patted his hand.

“I am very proud of my husband, Mr. Herkimer,” she said with a little bob of her head in which was a sense of proprietorship.  “You’ll see.”