Again he smiled—­this time in his best professional manner, in the midst of which he shook hands with Margaret and Thayor.  Then he added in a voice as if he had not slept for months—­

“Yes, there is a lot of grippe about.”

Thayor looked at him from under lowered lids.

“I wonder you could have left these poor people,” he said sententiously.

Alice, scenting danger, stretched forth one white hand and touched the doctor’s wrist.

“You came because I couldn’t do without you, didn’t you, dear doctor?”

Again the portiere opened.

“Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Van Rock—­Mr. Kennedy Jones—­Miss Trevor,” announced Blakeman successively.

Mrs. Thayor’s fourth dinner party that week had begun.

* * * * *

As the door closed at midnight upon the last guest, Margaret kissed her father and mother good-night and hurried to her room, leaving the two alone.  The dinner had been an ordeal to her—­never before had she seen her father so absorbed.

“You were very brilliant to-night, were you not?” exclaimed Alice as soon as she and Thayor were alone.

Thayor continued silent, gazing into the library fire, his hands clenched deep in his trousers pockets, his shoulders squared.

“A beautiful dinner,” she continued, her voice rising—­“the best I have had this season, and yet you sat there like a log.”

The man turned sharply—­so sharply that the woman at his side gave a start.

“Sit down!” he commanded—­“over there where I can see you.  I have something to say.”

She looked at him in amazement.  The determined ring in his voice made her half afraid.  What had he to say?

“What do you mean?” she retorted.

“Just what I said.  Sit down!”

The fair shoulders shrugged.  She was accustomed to these outbursts, but not to this ring in his voice.

“Go on—­what is it?”

Thayor crossed the room, shut the door and turned the key in the lock.  She watched him in silence as he switched off the electric lights along the bookcases, until naught illumined the still library but the soft glow of the lamp and the desultory flare from the hearth.

Still he did not speak.  Finally the storm broke.

“What I have to say to you is this:  I’m sick of this wholesale giving of dinners.”

Alice let go her breath.  After all, it was not what was uppermost in her mind.

“Ah!  So that’s it,” she returned.

“That’s a part of it,” he cried, “but not all.”

“And the other part?” she asked, her nervousness returning.

“I’ll come to that later,” said her husband, with an accent on the last word.  “It is necessary that I should begin at the beginning.”

“Go on,” she murmured nervously, gazing absently into the fire, her mind at work, her fears suddenly aroused.  For the first time its wavering light seemed restful.  “Go on—­I’m listening.”