“Not at all, but of your future,” Howat Penny asserted.

Her lower lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently capable.  She made no immediate reply.  James Polder’s fingers absently clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the thick liquid it contained.  “Just what do you recommend me to do?” Mariana challenged Howat.  “Go through with a lifeful of winters like the last!  Marry another Sam Lewis!  I am not celebrated for reliability; it is only with Jimmy—­” she broke off.  Howat Penny recalled her callous expression, photographed in Egyptian dress at a period ball, her description of the hard riding and reckless parties of the transplanted English colonies in the south.

Polder lifted the goblet to his lips, but set it back untasted.  Howat looked away from Mariana’s scornful interrogation, unable to reply.  Finally, “I am old, as you once reminded me,” he stated; “I’m out of my time, don’t understand, I can only remember, and remembering isn’t any longer of use.  The men I knew, the kind, I hope, I was, would ruin themselves a hundred times before compromising a woman.  Polder appears to understand that.  And women I had the privilege of meeting sacrificed themselves with a smile for what you dismiss as mere stupidity.  God knows which is right.  They looked the loveliest of creatures then.  There was a standard, we thought high....  Things a man couldn’t do.  But I don’t know—­it seems so long ago.”  He stopped to watch James Polder take a sip of the mixture in his hand.  The latter tasted it slowly, and then emptied the goblet.  His face was blank, with eyes nearly closed.

“I could carry Jimmy up in my hands,” Mariana said.  “Don’t,” she added vaguely, as he squeezed out the remaining half of his orange and poured fresh brandy into it.  “It’s curious,” he told her; “not at all bad.”

They moved out of the dining room, and Mariana and Polder continued to the porch.  Howat stood with a hand resting on the mahogany cigarette box; he had the feeling of a man unexpectedly left by a train thundering into the distance.  It would not stop, back, for him now; he was dropped.  He sank relaxed into an accustomed chair; his brain surrendered its troubling; the waking somnolence settled over him.  He was conscious of his surrounding, recognized its actuality; yet, at the same time, it seemed immaterial, like the setting of a dream.  He roused himself after a little and smoked, nodding his head to emphasize the points of his thought.

This Polder had shown the instinct of breeding; while Mariana was—­just what she was he couldn’t for the life of him determine.  A hussy, he decided temporarily.  After all, his own time, when black and white had been distinguishable, was best.  Howat Penny relinquished, with a sigh, the effort to penetrate to-day; he was content to be left behind; out of the grinding rush, the dizzy speed, of progression.  His day, when black had been black, was immeasurably