“I dined with the Fraides to-night,” she said.  “Mr. Fraide sent you a message.”

Unconsciously Loder smiled.  There was humor in the thought of a message to him from the great Fraide.  To hide his amusement he wheeled one of the big lounge-chairs forward.

“Indeed,” he said.  “Won’t you sit down?”

They were near together now, and he saw her face more fully.  Again he was taken aback.  Chilcote had spoken of her as successful and intelligent, but never as beautiful.  Yet her beauty was a rare and uncommon fact.  Her hair was black —­not a glossy black, but the dusky black that is softer than any brown; her eyes were large and of a peculiarly pure blue; and her eyelashes were black, beautifully curved and of remarkable thickness.

“Won’t you sit down?” he said again, cutting short his thoughts with some confusion.

“Thank you.”  She gravely accepted the proffered chair.  But he saw that without any ostentation she drew her skirts aside as she passed him.  The action displeased him unaccountably.

“Well,” he said, shortly, “what had Fraide to say?” He walked to the mantel-piece with his customary movement and stood watching her.  The instinct towards hiding his face had left him.  Her instant and uninterested acceptance of him almost nettled him; his own half-contemptuous impression of Chilcote came to him unpleasantly, and with it the first desire to assert his own individuality.  Stung by the conflicting emotions, he felt in Chilcote’s pockets for something to smoke.

Eve saw and interpreted the action.  “Are these your cigarettes?” She leaned towards a small table and took up a box made of lizard-skin.

“Thanks.”  He took the box from her, and as it passed from one to the other he saw her glance at his rings.  The glance was momentary; her lips parted to express question or surprise, then closed again without comment.  More than any spoken words, the incident showed him the gulf that separated husband and wife.

“Well?” he said again, “what about Fraide?”

At his words she sat straighter and looked at him more directly, as if bracing herself to a task.

“Mr. Fraide is—­is as interested as ever in you,” she began.

“Or in you?” Loder made the interruption precisely as he felt Chilcote would have made it.  Then instantly he wished the words back.

Eve’s warm skin colored more deeply; for a second the inscrutable underlying expression that puzzled him showed in her eyes, then she sank back into a corner of the chair.

“Why do you make such a point of sneering at my friends?” she asked, quietly.  “I overlook it when you are nervous.”  She halted slightly on the word.  “But you are not nervous tonight.”

Loder, to his great humiliation, reddened.  Except for an occasional outburst on the part of Mrs. Robins, his charwoman, he had not merited a woman’s displeasure for years.