As for Alixe, she also was mildly flattered—­a trifle disdainfully perhaps, but still genuinely pleased at the honesty of this crude devotion.  She was touched, too; and, besides, she trusted him; for he was clearly as transparent as the spring air.  Also most women lugged a boy about with them; she had had several, but none as nice as Gerald.  To tie him up and tack his license on was therefore natural to her; and if she hesitated to conclude his subjection in short order it was that, far in a corner of her restless soul, there hid an ever-latent fear of Selwyn; of his opinions concerning her fitness to act mentor to the boy of whom he was fond, and whose devotion to him was unquestioned.

Yet now, in spite of that—­perhaps even partly because of it, she decided on the summary taming of Gerald; so she let her hand fall, by accident, close to his on the cushioned seat, to see what he’d do about it.

It took him some time to make up his mind; but when he did he held it so gingerly, so respectfully, that she was obliged to look out of the window.  Clearly he was quite the safest and nicest of all the unfledged she had ever possessed.

“Please, don’t,” she said sadly.

And by that token she took him for her own.

* * * * *

She was very light-hearted that evening when she dropped him at the Stuyvesant Club and whizzed away to her own house, for he had promised not to play again on her premises, and she had promised to be nice to him and take him about when she was shy of an escort.  She also repeated that he was truly an “enigma” and that she was beginning to be a little afraid of him, which was an economical way of making him very proud and happy.  Being his first case of beauty in distress, and his first harmless love-affair with a married woman, he looked about him as he entered the club and felt truly that he had already outgrown the young and callow innocents who haunted it.

* * * * *

On her way home Alixe smilingly reviewed the episode until doubt of Selwyn’s approval crept in again; and her amused smile had faded when she reached her home.

The house of Ruthven was a small but ultra-modern limestone affair, between Madison and Fifth; a pocket-edition of the larger mansions of their friends, but with less excuse for the overelaboration since the dimensions were only twenty by a hundred.  As a matter of fact its narrow ornate facade presented not a single quiet space the eyes might rest on after a tiring attempt to follow and codify the arabesques, foliations, and intricate vermiculations of what some disrespectfully dubbed as “near-aissance.”

However, into this limestone bonbon-box tripped Mrs. Ruthven, mounted the miniature stairs with a whirl of her scented skirts, peeped into the drawing-room, but continued mounting until she whipped into her own apartments, separated from those of her lord and master by a locked door.