But when Rose came into the drawing-room—­in a wonderful gown that dared much, and won the reward of daring—­a gown she’d meant to hold in reserve for a greater occasion, but had put on to-night because she had felt somehow like especially pleasing Rodney—­when she came in, she reoxygenated the social atmosphere.  She won a moment of complete silence, and when the buzz of talk arose again, it was jerky—­the product of divided minds and unstable attentions.

She was, in fact, a stranger.  Her voice had a bead on it which roused a perfectly unreasoning physical excitement—­the kind of bead which, in singing, makes all the difference between a church choir and grand opera.  The glow they were accustomed to in her eyes, concentrated itself into flashes, and the flush that so often, and so adorably, suffused her face, burnt brighter now in her cheeks and left the rest pale.

And these were true indices of the change that had taken place within her.  From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she’d walked away from Rodney’s office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation.  She had found herself suddenly feeling lighter, older, indescribably more confident.  That dinner was to be gone through with, was it?  Well, it should be!  They shouldn’t suspect her humiliation or her hurt.  She was conscious suddenly of enormous reserves of power hitherto unsuspected—­a power that could be exercised to any extent she chose, according to her will.

Her husband, James Randolph reflected, had evidently either been making love to her, or indulging in the civilized equivalent of beating her; he was curious to find out which.  And having learned from his wife that Rose was to sit beside him at the table, he made up his mind that he would make her tell him.

He didn’t attempt it, though, during his first talk with her—­confined himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for polite conversation over the same hors-d’oeuvres and entrees, from one dinner to the next, the season round.  It wasn’t until Eleanor had turned the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game.

“No need asking you if you like this sort of thing,” he said.  “I would like to know how you keep it up.  You have the same things said to you seven nights a week and you make the same answers—­thrust and parry, carte and tierce, buttons on the foils.  It can’t any of it get anywhere.  What’s the attraction?”

“You can’t get a rise out of me to-night,” said Rose.  “Not after what I’ve been through to-day.  Madame Greville’s been talking to me.  She thinks American women are dreadful dubs,—­or she would if she knew the word—­thinks we don’t know our own game.  Do you agree with her?”

“I’ll tell you that,” he said, “after you answer my question.  What’s the attraction?”

“Don’t you think it would be a mistake,” said Rose, “for me to try to analyze it?  Suppose I did and found there wasn’t any!  You aren’t supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know.”