She went to the piano, played over a few bars of Thais, and dropped her hands listlessly.  Cross currents of the strange events of the day flowed through her mind:  Peter’s arrival and its odd heralding, and the discomfort of Mr. Grainger.

Howard came in.  He did not see her under the shaded lamp, and she sat watching him with a curious feeling of detachment as he unfolded his newspaper and sank, with a sigh of content, into the cushioned chair which Mr. Grainger had vacated.  Was it fancy that her husband’s physical attributes had changed since he had attained his new position of dignity?  She could have sworn that he had visibly swollen on the evening when he had announced to her his promotion, and he seemed to have remained swollen.  Not bloated, of course:  he was fatter, and—­if possible pinker.  But there was a growing suggestion in him of humming-and-hawing greatness.  If there—­were leisure in this too-leisurely chronicle for what might be called aftermath, the dinner that Honora had given to some of her Quicksands friends might be described.  Suffice it to recall, with Honora, that Lily Dallam, with a sure instinct, had put the finger of her wit on this new attribute of Howard’s.

“You’ll kill me, Howard!” she had cried.  “He even looks at the soup as though he were examining a security!”

Needless to say, it did not cure him, although it sealed Lily Dallam’s fate—­and incidentally that of Quicksands.  Honora’s thoughts as she sat now at the piano watching him, flew back unexpectedly to the summer at Silverdale when she had met him, and she tried to imagine, the genial and boyish representative of finance that he was then.  In the midst of this effort he looked up and discovered her.

“What are you doing over there, Honora?” he asked.

“Thinking,” she answered.

“That’s a great way to treat a man when he comes home after a day’s work.”

“I beg your pardon, Howard,” she said with unusual meekness.  “Who do you think was here this afternoon?”

“Erwin?  I’ve just come from Mr. Wing’s house—­he has gout to-day and didn’t go down town.  He offered Erwin a hundred thousand a year to come to New York as corporation counsel.  And if you’ll believe me—­he refused it.”

“I’ll believe you,” she said.

“Did he say anything about it to you?”

“He simply mentioned that Mr. Wing asked him to come to New York.  He didn’t say why.”

“Well,” Howard remarked, “he’s one too many for me.  He can’t be making over thirty thousand where he is.”

CHAPTER II

THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY