“How I should behave?”

She nodded.

His hands clasped hers.  He told her how he should behave.  He even offered to show her, without putting her to the trouble of tears.

“You mean,” she said, “that you would forgive me?  Well, forgive me, anyhow.  I’m doing what I think is right about this old dinner.  Perhaps I’m wrong about it; perhaps you’re mistaken and I’m not absolutely perfect, but if I were, think what a lot of fun you would miss in changing me.  And you know I never meant to abandon you for the whole evening.  I’ll get away at half past nine and we’ll take a little turn.”

So that was settled.

CHAPTER III

As they drove back she revealed another plan to him—­she was taking him for a moment to see a friend of hers.  He protested.  He did not want to see anyone but herself, but Crystal was firm.  He must see this woman; she was their celebrated parlor Bolshevist.  Ben hated parlor Bolshevists.  Did he know any?  No.  Well, then.  Anyhow, Sophia would never forgive her if she did not bring him.  Sophia adored celebrities.  Sophia who?  Sophia Dawson.  The name seemed dimly familiar to Ben, and then he remembered.  It was the name on the thousand-dollar check for the strike sufferers that had come in the day before.

They drove up an avenue of little oaks to a formidable palace built of gray stone, so smoothly faced that there was not a crevice in the immense pale facade.  Two men in knee-breeches opened the double doors and they went in between golden grilles and rows of tall white lilies.  They were led through a soundless hall, and up stairs so thickly carpeted that the feet sank in as in new-fallen snow, and finally they were ushered through a small painted door into a small painted room, which had been brought all the way from Sienna, and there they found Mrs. Dawson—­a beautiful, worn, world-weary Mrs. Dawson, with one streak of gray in the front of her dark hair, her tragic eyes, and her long violet and black draperies—­a perfect Sibyl.

Crystal did not treat her as a Sibyl, however.  “Hullo, Sophie!” she said.  “This is my brother-in-law’s brother, Ben Moreton.  He’s crazy to meet you.  You’ll like him.  I can’t stay because I’m dining somewhere or other, but he’s not.”

“Will he dine with me?” said Mrs. Dawson in a wonderful deep, slow voice—­“just stay on and dine with me alone?”

Ben began to say that he couldn’t, but Crystal said yes, that he would be delighted to, and that she would stop for him again about half past nine, and that it was a wonderful plan, and then she went away.

Mrs. Dawson seemed to take it all as a matter of course.  “Sit down, Mr. Moreton,” she said.  “I have a quarrel with you.”

Ben could not help feeling a little disturbed by the way he had been injected into Mrs. Dawson’s evening without her volition.  He did not sit down.