They were among the last to leave and Vera and Braden offered to take Constance to her apartment in Braden’s car, while Stella contrived prettily to take so much of Warrington’s time with the wraps that by the time they were ready to go the manner of the breaking up of the party was as she wanted it.  In her final triumph she could not help just an extra inflection on, “I hope I’ll see you again at Vera’s soon, my dear.”

All night, or at least all that was left of it, Constance tried to straighten out the whirl of her thoughts.  With the morning she had an idea.  Now, in a moment when the exhilaration of the gay life was at low ebb, she must see Stella.

It was early yet, but Stella was not at her hotel when Constance cautiously called up the office to find out.  Where was she?  Constance drove around to Charmant’s on the chance that she might be there.  Vera greeted her a trifle coldly, she thought, but then this was not midnight at the Montmartre.  No, Stella was not there, she said, but nevertheless Constance decided to wait.

“I’m all unstrung,” confided Constance, with an assumed air of languor, as she dropped into a chair.

Charmant, as fresh as if she had just emerged from the proverbial bandbox, nodded knowingly.  “A Turkish bath, massage, something to tone you up,” she advised.

With alert eyes Constance went patiently through the process of freshening, first in the steamy hot room where she had met Stella the day before, then the deliciously cool shower, gentle massage, and all the rest.

At one of the little white tables of the manicures she noticed a pretty, rather sad-faced little woman.  There was something about her that attracted Constance’s attention, although she could not have told exactly what it was.

“You know her?” whispered Floretta, bursting with excitement.  “No?  Why,—­” and here she paused and dropped her voice even lower,—­ “that’s Mrs. Warrington.”

“Not the—­”

“Yes,” she nodded, “his wife.  You know, she comes here twice a week.  We have to do some tall scheming to keep them apart.  No, it’s not vanity, either.  It’s—­well—­you see, she’s trying to get him back, to look like a sport.”

Constance thought of the hopeless fight so far which the little woman was waging to keep up with the dashing actress.  Then she thought of Warrington, of last night, of how he had sought her, so ready, it seemed, to leave even the “other woman.”  Then Floretta’s remark repeated itself mechanically.  “We have to do some tall scheming to keep them apart.”  Was Stella here, after all?

Mrs. Warrington was not a bad looking woman and in fact it was difficult to see how she expected to be improved by cosmetics that would lighten her complexion, bleaches that would flaxen her hair, tortures for this, that, and the other defect, real or imagined.

Now, however, she was a creature of reinforcements, from her puffy masses of light hair to her French heels and embroidered stockings that showed through the slash in the drapery of her gown.