And then and there I determined that he should never know the truth.  He could go back to South America and build bridges and make love to the Spanish girls (or are they Spanish down there?) and think of me always as a married woman, married to a dilettante artist, inclined to be stout—­the artist, not I—­and with an Aunt Selina Caruthers who made buttons and believed in the Cause.  But never, never should he think of me as a silly little fool who pretended that she was the other man’s wife and had a lump in her throat because when a really nice man came along, a man who knew something more than polo and motors, she had to carry on the deception to keep his respect, and be sedate and matronly, and see him change from perfect open admiration at first to a hands-off-she-is-my-host’s-wife attitude at last.

“It can never be undone,” I said soberly.

Well, that’s the picture as nearly as I can draw it:  a round table with a low centerpiece of orchids in lavenders and pink, old silver candlesticks with filigree shades against the somber wainscoting; nine people, two of them unhappy—­Jim and I; one of them complacent—­Aunt Selina; one puzzled—­Mr. Harbison; and the rest hysterically mirthful.  Add one sick Japanese butler and grind in the mills of the gods.

Every one promptly forgot Takahiro in the excitement of the game we were all playing.  Finally, however, Aunt Selina, who seemed to have Takahiro on her mind, looked up from her plate.

“That Jap was speckled,” she asserted.  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s measles.  Has he been sniffling, James?”

“Has he been sniffling?” Jim threw across at me.

“I hadn’t noticed it,” I said meekly, while the others choked.

Max came to the rescue.  “She refused to eat it,” he explained, distinctly and to everybody, apropos absolutely of nothing.  “It said on the box,’ready cooked and predigested.’  She declared she didn’t care who cooked it, but she wanted to know who predigested it.”

As every one wanted to laugh, every one did it then, and under cover of the noise I caught Anne’s eye, and we left the dining room.  The men stayed, and by the very firmness with which the door closed behind us, I knew that Dallas and Max were bringing out the bottles that Takahiro had hidden.  I was seething.  When Aunt Selina indicated a desire to go over the house (it was natural that she should want to; it was her house, in a way) I excused myself for a minute and flew back to the dining room.

It was as I had expected.  Jim hadn’t cheered perceptibly, and the rest were patting him on the back, and pouring things out for him, and saying, “Poor old Jim” in the most maddening way.  And the Harbison man was looking more and more puzzled, and not at all hilarious.

I descended on them like a thunderbolt.

“That’s it,” I cried shrewishly, with my back against the door.  “Leave her to me, all of you, and pat each other on the back, and say it’s gone splendidly!  Oh, I know you, every one!” Mr. Harbison got up and pulled out a chair, but I couldn’t sit; I folded my arms on the back.  “After a while, I suppose, you’ll slip upstairs, the four of you, and have your game.”  They looked guilty.  “But I will block that right now.  I am going to stay—­here.  If Aunt Selina wants me, she can find me—­here!”