The maid brought the coffee, and while she sat up to drink it the door of her husband’s dressing-room opened and he came in and stood, large, florid and impressive, beside her bed.

“I’m afraid I shan’t get back to luncheon,” he remarked, as he settled his ample, carefully groomed body in his clothes with a comfortable shake, “there’s a chap from the country Pierce has sent to me with a letter and I’ll be obliged to feed him at the club, but—­to tell the truth—­there’s so little one can get really fit at this season.”

To a man for whom the pleasures of the table represented the larger share of his daily enjoyment, this was a question not without a serious importance of its own; and while he paused to settle it he stood, squaring his chest, with an expression of decided annoyance on his handsome, good-humored face.  Then, having made a satisfactory choice of dishes, his features recovered their usual look of genial contentment, and he felt carelessly in his pocket for the letter which he presently produced and laid on Gerty’s pillow.  His life had corresponded so evenly with his bodily impulses that the perfection of the adjustment had produced in him the amiable exterior of an animal that is never crossed.  It was a case in which supreme selfishness exerted the effect of personality.

Leaving the letter where he had placed it, Gerty sat sipping her coffee while she looked up at him with the candid cynicism which lent a piquant charm to the almost doll-like regularity of her features.

“You did not get three hours sleep and yet you’re so fresh you smell of soap,” she observed as an indignant protest, “while I’ve had six and I’m still too tired to move.”

“Oh, I’m all right—­I never let myself get seedy,” returned Perry, with his loud though pleasant laugh.  “That’s the mistake all you women make.”

Half closing her eyes Gerty leaned back and surveyed him with a curious detachment—­almost as if he were an important piece of architecture which she had been recommended to admire and to which she was patiently trying in vain to adjust her baffled vision.  The smaller she screwed her gaze the more remotely magnificent loomed his proportions.

“How you manage it is more than I can understand,” she said.

Perry stared for a moment in an amiable vacancy at the coffee pot.  Then she watched the animation move feebly in his face, while he pulled at his short fair moustache with a characteristic masculine gesture.  Physically, she admitted, he had never appeared to a better advantage in her eyes.

“By the way, I had a game of billiards with Kemper and we talked pretty late,” he said, as if evolving the explanation for which she had not asked.  “He got back from Europe yesterday you know.”

“He did?” Her indifferent gaiety played like harmless lightning around his massive bulk.  “Then we may presume, I suppose, on Madame Alta for the opera season?”