“May I come in a moment?” Her husband’s voice was a shade thicker than usual and his face still wore the somber expression which seemed so out of place there.

“It’s almost two o’clock, Len.”  There was an uninviting coolness in the quality of Loraine’s tone—­almost a protest.  “Won’t tomorrow do?” She stood still, holding the door only a few inches ajar.

“I won’t keep you up long,” he assured her.

“I’m very tired.”

Len Haswell laid his hand on the knob and opened the door in spite of her unwelcome.  “If you please,” he said quietly.  He came in and lighted a cigarette, then he inquired with an unaccustomed irony:  “What tired you, Loraine?  You didn’t seem to be dancing much.”

His wife shrugged her shoulders.  Beyond that she failed to reply.

The big man came over and took both her hands in his own with a half-savage affection.  “Loraine,” he said pleadingly, “I wanted to dance with you tonight.  I searched high and low, but I couldn’t find you.  For my part I have spent a very dreary evening.”

“You know, Len,” she casually reminded him, “you and I can’t dance together.  I’m a fair dancer and you are a very good one, but together we can’t manage it.  There were plenty of other girls, weren’t there?”

The man’s face for an instant worked spasmodically and in pain, then it grew dark.  “For me, Loraine, there is never any other girl.  You know that.  Why do you avoid me as if I were a pestilence?  Why can’t you sometimes be the girl you used to be?  Presumably you married me because you wanted to.  You had better offers, richer lovers.  Have I changed so much in five years—­and if not, what in God’s name has changed you?”

She withdrew her hands from his and sat again in the chair before the mirror.  “Len,” she said with a touch of petulance in her voice, “you get into grouches and spur your imagination to all sorts of absurdities.  I’m very sleepy.  Why can’t you reserve your fault-finding until tomorrow?”

Len Haswell answered quietly, but obdurately.  “For two reasons.  In the first place I sha’n’t be able to sleep unless you answer me.  In the second place I shall probably see as much of you tomorrow as I have today—­which is nothing.”  His tone hardened.  “You are too tired to give me a few minutes, but you found it both possible and agreeable to give Paul Burton the entire evening.”

“Oh,” she laughed easily and with well-simulated amusement, “I should fancy from the contemptuous things I have heard you men say about Paul, you would regard him as quite harmless.”

“Paul!” repeated the man accusingly.  “When did you begin calling him by his first name?  Does he call you Loraine, too?”

“Why not?  We are friends.”  She looked up at her husband’s face with an air of injured innocence and he paced a turn or two across the floor before he halted before her.

“I wish you would see less of him.  I don’t talk business to you often.  It bores you, but you know that we are always strained to hold the pace that richer members of our set cut out.  We have to pay very high for a privilege which has no value to me except that you like it.”