The throng in the dining-room was thickening, and Bernald’s efforts as purveyor were interrupted by frequent appeals, from ladies who had reached repleteness, that he should sit down a moment and tell them all about his interesting friend.  Winterman’s fame, trumpeted abroad by Miss Fosdick, had reached the four corners of the Uplift Club, and Bernald found himself fabricating de toutes pieces a Winterman legend which should in some degree respond to the Club’s demand for the human document.  When at length he had acquitted himself of this obligation, and was free to work his way back through the lessening groups into the drawing-room, he was at last rewarded by a glimpse of his friend, who, still densely encompassed, towered in the centre of the room in all his sovran ugliness.

Their eyes met across the crowd; but Bernald gathered only perplexity from the encounter.  What were Pellerin’s eyes saying to him?  What orders, what confidences, what indefinable apprehension did their long look impart?  The young man was still trying to decipher their complex message when he felt a tap on the arm, and turned to encounter the rueful gaze of Bob Wade, whose meaning lay clearly enough on the surface of his good blue stare.

“Well, it won’t work—­it won’t work,” the doctor groaned.

“What won’t?”

“I mean with Howland.  Winterman won’t.  Howland doesn’t take to him.  Says he’s crude—­frightfully crude.  And you know how Howland hates crudeness.”

“Oh, I know,” Bernald exulted.  It was the word he had waited for—­he saw it now!  Once more he was lost in wonder at Howland’s miraculous faculty for always, as the naturalists said, being true to type.

“So I’m afraid it’s all up with his chance of writing.  At least I can do no more,” said Wade, discouraged.

Bernald pressed him for farther details.  “Does Winterman seem to mind much?  Did you hear his version?”

“His version?”

“I mean what he said to Howland.”

“Why no.  What the deuce was there for him to say?”

“What indeed?  I think I’ll take him home,” said Bernald gaily.

He turned away to join the circle from which, a few minutes before, Pellerin’s eyes had vainly and enigmatically signalled to him; but the circle had dispersed, and Pellerin himself was not in sight.

Bernald, looking about him, saw that during his brief aside with Wade the party had passed into the final phase of dissolution.  People still delayed, in diminishing groups, but the current had set toward the doors, and every moment or two it bore away a few more lingerers.  Bernald, from his post, commanded the clearing perspective of the two drawing-rooms, and a rapid survey of their length sufficed to assure him that Pellerin was not in either.  Taking leave of Wade, the young man made his way back to the drawing-room, where only a few hardened feasters remained, and then passed on to the library which had been the scene of the late momentous colloquy.  But the library too was empty, and drifting back uncertainly to the inner drawing-room Bernald found Mrs. Beecher Bain domestically putting out the wax candles on the mantel-piece.