Her mood was altering: 

“You’re a brute, Kelly, to make me miserable.  I was having such a good time at the Gigolette when I suddenly saw you—­your expression—­and—­I don’t even yet know why, but every bit of joy went out of everything for me—­”

“I was going out, too,” he said, laughing.  “Why didn’t you remain?  Your gay spirits would have returned untroubled after my departure.”

There was an ugly sound to his laugh which checked her, left her silent for a moment.  Then: 

“Did you disapprove of me?” she asked, curiously.  “Was that it?”

“No.  You can take care of yourself, I fancy.”

“I have had to,” she said, gravely.

He was silent.

She added with a light laugh not perfectly genuine: 

“I suppose I am experiencing with you what all mortals experience when they become entangled with the gods.”

“What is that?”

“Unhappiness.  All the others experienced it—­Proserpine, Helen, poor little Psyche—­every nice girl who ever became mixed up with the Olympians had a bad half hour of it sooner or later.  And to-night the great god Kelly has veiled his face from me, and I’m on my knees at his altar sacrificing every shred of sweet temper to propitiate him.  Now, mighty and sulky oracle! what has happened to displease you?”

He said:  “If there seems to be any constraint—­if anything has altered our pleasant intimacy, I don’t know what it is any more than you do, Valerie.”

“Then there is something!”

“I have not said so.”

“Well, then, I say so,” she said, impatiently.  “And I say, also, that whatever threatens our excellent understanding ought to be hunted out and destroyed.  Shall we do it together, Louis?”

He said nothing.

“Come to the fire and talk it over like two sensible people.  Will you?  And please pull that sofa around to the blaze for me.  Thank you.  This, Kelly, is our bed of justice.”

She drew the cushions under her head and nestled down in the full warmth of the hearth.

“Le lit de justice,” she repeated, gaily.  “Here I preside, possessing inquisitorial power and prerogative, and exercising here to-night the high justice, the middle, and the low.  Now hale before me those skulking knaves, Doubt, Suspicion, and Distrust, and you and I will make short work of them.  Pull ’em along by their ears, Louis!  This Court means to sit all night if necessary!”

[Illustration:  “‘How perfectly horrid you can be!’ she exclaimed.”]

She laughed merrily, raised herself on one arm, and looked him straight in the eyes: 

“Louis!”

“What?”

“Do you doubt me?”

“Doubt what?”

“That my friendship for you is as warm as the moment it began?”

He said, unsmiling:  “People meet as we met, become friends—­very good, very close friends—­in that sort of friendship which is governed by chance and environment.  The hazard that throws two people into each other’s company is the same hazard that separates them.  It is not significant either way....  I liked you—­missed you....  Our companionship had been pleasant.”