Next day Carley motored through Central Park, and out of town into Westchester County, finding some relief from the seemed to look at the dusty trees and the worn greens without really seeing them.  In the afternoon she called on friends, and had dinner at home with her aunt, and then went to a theatre.  The musical comedy was good, but the almost unbearable heat and the vitiated air spoiled her enjoyment.  That night upon arriving home at midnight she stepped out of the taxi, and involuntarily, without thought, looked up to see the stars.  But there were no stars.  A murky yellow-tinged blackness hung low over the city.  Carley recollected that stars, and sunrises and sunsets, and untainted air, and silence were not for city dwellers.  She checked any continuation of the thought.

A few days sufficed to swing her into the old life.  Many of Carley’s friends had neither the leisure nor the means to go away from the city during the summer.  Some there were who might have afforded that if they had seen fit to live in less showy apartments, or to dispense with cars.  Other of her best friends were on their summer outings in the Adirondacks.  Carley decided to go with her aunt to Lake Placid about the first of August.  Meanwhile she would keep going and doing.

She had been a week in town before Morrison telephoned her and added his welcome.  Despite the gay gladness of his voice, it irritated her.  Really, she scarcely wanted to see him.  But a meeting was inevitable, and besides, going out with him was in accordance with the plan she had adopted.  So she made an engagement to meet him at the Plaza for dinner.  When with slow and pondering action she hung up the receiver it occurred to her that she resented the idea of going to the Plaza.  She did not dwell on the reason why.

When Carley went into the reception room of the Plaza that night Morrison was waiting for her—­the same slim, fastidious, elegant, sallow-faced Morrison whose image she had in mind, yet somehow different.  He had what Carley called the New York masculine face, blase and lined, with eyes that gleamed, yet had no fire.  But at sight of her his face lighted up.

“By Jove! but you’ve come back a peach!” he exclaimed, clasping her extended hand.  “Eleanor told me you looked great.  It’s worth missing you to see you like this.”

“Thanks, Larry,” she replied.  “I must look pretty well to win that compliment from you.  And how are you feeling?  You don’t seem robust for a golfer and horseman.  But then I’m used to husky Westerners.”

“Oh, I’m fagged with the daily grind,” he said.  “I’ll be glad to get up in the mountains next month.  Let’s go down to dinner.”

They descended the spiral stairway to the grillroom, where an orchestra was playing jazz, and dancers gyrated on a polished floor, and diners in evening dress looked on over their cigarettes.

“Well, Carley, are you still finicky about the eats?” he queried, consulting the menu.