“Well, what of it?” asked her father a bit tartly.

“Oh, nothing special,” said little Eve Edgarton, “except that his skin was like yellow parchment!  And sand-paper!  And old plaster!”

Without further ado then, she turned away, and, except for the single ecstatic episode of making the four hundred muffins for breakfast, resumed her pulseless role of being just—­little Eve Edgarton.

As for Barton, the subsequent morning hours brought sleep and sleep only—­the sort of sleep that fairly souses the senses in oblivion, weighing the limbs with lead, the brain with stupor, till the sleeper rolls out from under the load at last like one half paralyzed with cramp and helplessness.

Certainly it was long after noon-time before Barton actually rallied his aching bones, his dizzy head, his refractory inclinations, to meet the fluctuant sympathy and chaff that awaited him down-stairs in every nook and corner of the great, idle-minded hotel.

Conscientiously, but without enthusiasm, from the temporary retreat of the men’s writing-room, he sent up his card at last to Mr. Edgarton, and was duly informed that that gentleman and his daughter were mountain-climbing.  In an absurd flare of disappointment then, he edged his way out through the prattling piazza groups to the shouting tennis players, and on from the shouting tennis players to the teasing golfers, and back from the teasing golfers to the peaceful writing-room, where in a great, lazy chair by the open window he settled down once more with unwonted morbidness to brood over the grimly bizarre happenings of the previous night.

In a soft blur of sound and sense the names of other people came wafting to him from time to time, and once or twice at least the word “Barton” shrilled out at him with astonishing poignancy.  Still like a man half drugged he dozed again—­and woke in a vague, sweating terror—­and dozed again—­and dreamed again—­and roused himself at last with the one violent determination to hook his slipping consciousness, whether or no, into the nearest conversation that he could reach.

The conversation going on at the moment just outside his window was not a particularly interesting one to hook one’s attention into, but at least it was fairly distinct.  In blissfully rational human voices two unknown men were discussing the non-domesticity of the modern woman.  It was not an erudite discussion, but just a mere personal complaint.

“I had a house,” wailed one, “the nicest, coziest house you ever saw.  We were two years building it.  And there was a garden—­a real jim-dandy flower and vegetable garden—­and there were twenty-seven fruit-trees.  But my wife—­” the wail deepened—­“my wife—­she just would live in a hotel!  Couldn’t stand the ‘strain,’ she said, of ‘planning food three times a day’!  Not—­’couldn’t stand the strain of earning meals three times a day’—­you understand,” the wailing voice added significantly, “but couldn’t stand the strain of ordering ’em.  People all around you, you know, starving to death for just—­bread; but she couldn’t stand the strain of having to decide between squab and tenderloin!  Eh?”