The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and had a high ceiling in varnished light wood.  Byron Polder faced his wife at the opposite end of the table.  Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother’s right; and a waiting place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl.  “This is Kate,” Mrs. Polder said proudly.  Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome female for years.  She wore a ruffled, transparent crepe de Chine waist that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth drooping like her father’s, but more warmly bowed.  Kate Polder met the direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission that she understood and subscribed to it.  Here, at last, was a girl up to the standard of old days, the divinity of Scalchi herself.  She would have created a sensation in Delmonico’s, the real Delmonico’s.  Gary and the Colonel—­

“We think they’re elegant,” Mrs. Polder’s voice broke in on his revery.  He looked up and saw a great fish on a huge platter before his host, a fish in surprising semblance to life, had it not been for the rosettes of lemon, the green bed, which surrounded it.  “Gracious, no,” she answered Mariana’s query; “we don’t do it home.  Mr. Polder has them sent from a Rathskeller down town.  He’ll make a meal off one.”  The latter was plainly chagrined at this light thrown on his petty appetites.  He assumed an air of complete detachment in the portioning of the dish; but, at the same time, managed to supply himself liberally.  The conversation was sporadic.  Howat Penny found the dinner lavish, and divided his attention between it and Kate Polder.  James and Mariana addressed general remarks to the table at succeeding intervals.  Mr. Polder gloomed, and Isabella went through the gestures, the accents, of the occasion with utter correctness.  Howat studied Mariana, but he was unable to discover her thoughts; she was smiling and cordial; and apologized for losing her slipper.  “I always do,” she explained.  James Polder hastily rose, and came around to assist her.  The dinner was at an end, and she stood with a slim, silken foot outheld for him to replace the fragile object of search.

They reassembled above, and Mrs. Polder suggested music.  “My son says you are very fond of good music,” she addressed Howat Penny.  “I can tell you it is a lovely taste.  We have the prettiest records that come.  Isabella, put on Hark, Hark, the Lark.”  She obediently rose, and, revolving the handle of the talking machine, fixed the grooved, rubber disk and needle.  Howat listened with a stony countenance to the ensuing strains.  Such instruments were his particular detestation.  Mrs. Polder waved her hand dreamily.  “Now,” she said, “the Sextette, and The End of a Perfect Day.  No, Mr. Penny would like to hear Salome, I’m sure, with all those cymbals and creepy Eastern tunes.”  An orgy of sound followed, applauded—­perversely, he was certain—­by Mariana.  James, he saw, was as uneasy as himself; but for a totally different reason.  He gazed at Mariana with a fierce devotion patent to the most casual eye; his expression was tormented with concern and longing.