Martie never dreamed that the youth and sex within her had as definite a claim on her senses as hunger had in the hour before dinner time, or sleep had when she nodded over her solitaire at night.  But she drank in enchantment with Rodney’s voice, his laughter, his nearness, and the night was too short for her dreams or the days for her happiness.

They left the Roman-nosed horse and the surrey at Beetman’s livery stable, a damp and odorous enclosure smelling of wet straw, and with the rear quarters of nervous bay horses stirring in the stalls.  The various men, smoking and spitting there in the Sunday afternoon leisure, knew Martie and nodded to her; knew who her companion was.

Martie and Rodney walked down South California Street, into the town’s nicest quarter, and passed the old-fashioned wooden houses, set far back in bare gardens:  the Wests’ with its wooden palings; the Clifford Frosts’, with a hooded baby carriage near the side door; and the senior Frosts’, a dark red house shut in by a dark red fence.  The Barkers’ house was the last in the row, rambling, ugly, decorated with knobs and triangles of wood, with many porches, with coloured glass frames on its narrow windows, yet imposing withal, because of its great size and the great trees about it.  Martie had not been there since her childhood, in the days before Malcolm Monroe’s attitude on the sewer and street-lighting questions had antagonized his neighbours, in the days when Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Parker still exchanged occasional calls with Martie’s mother.

The girl found strangely thrilling Rodney’s familiarity here.  He crossed the porch, opened the unlocked front door, and led Martie through a large, over-furnished hall and a large, stately drawing room.  The rugs, lamps, chairs, and tables all belonged to entirely different periods, some were Mission oak, some cherry upholstered in rich brocade; there was a little mahogany, some maple, even a single handsome square chair of teakwood from the Orient.  On the walls there were large crayon portraits made from photographs of the girls, and there were cushions everywhere, some of fringed leather, some of satin painted or embroidered, some of cigar ribbons of clear yellow silk, some with college pennants flaunting across them.

Beyond this room was another large one, looking out on the lawn and the shabby willows at the side of the house.  Into this room the more favoured one had been casting off its abandoned fineries for many years.  There were more rugs, pillows, lamps, and chairs in here, but it was all more shabby, and the effect was pleasanter and softer.  Ida’s tea table stood by the hearth, with innovations such as a silver tea-ball, and a porcelain cracker jar decorated with a rich design in the minutely cut and shellacked details of postage stamps.  A fire winked sleepily behind the polished steel bars of the grate, the western window was full of potted begonias and ferns, the air was close and pleasantly scented with the odour of a good cigar.