“Not until you have had and broken every toy in the shop,” he declared.  “Out of the mouths of men of the world occasionally issues wisdom.  I’m going to help you get the toys.  Don’t you think I’m kind?”

“And isn’t this philanthropic mood a little new to you?” she asked.

“I thought I had exhausted all novelties,” he answered.  “Perhaps that’s the reason why I enjoy it.”

She turned and walked slowly into the drawing-room, halted, and stood staring at the heap of gold and yellow bills that Mr. Grainger had deposited in front of the place where she had sat.  Her sensation was akin to sickness.  She reached out with a kind of shuddering fascination and touched the gold.

“I think,” she said, speaking rather to herself than to Brent, “I’ll give it to charity.”

“If it is possible to combine a meritorious act with good policy, I should suggest giving it to Mrs. Grainger for the relief of oppressed working girls,” he said.

Honora started.

“I wonder why Howard doesn’t come she exclaimed, looking at the clock.

“Probably because he is holding nothing but full hands and flushes,” hazarded Mr. Brent.  “Might I propose myself for dinner?”

“When so many people are clamouring for you?” she asked.

“Even so,” he said.

“I think I’ll telephone to the Club,” said Honora, and left the room.

It was some time before her husband responded to the call; and then he explained that if Honora didn’t object, he was going to a man’s dinner in a private room.  The statement was not unusual.

“But, Howard,” she said, I—­I wanted you particularly to-night.”

“I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam.  She told me you were.  Are you alone?”

“Mr. Brent is here.  He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge.  They’ve gone.”

“Oh, Brent will amuse you,” he replied.  “I didn’t know you were going to be home, and I’ve promised these men.  I’ll come back early.”

She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, paused a moment, and went back to the drawing-room.  Brent looked up.

“Well,” he said, “was I right?”

“You seem always to be right,” Honora, sighed.

After dinner they sat in the screened part of the porch which Mrs. Fern had arranged very cleverly as an outside room.  Brent had put a rug over Honora’s knees, for the ocean breath that stirred the leaves was cold.  Across the darkness fragments of dance music drifted fitfully from the Club, and died away; and at intervals, when the embers of his cigar flared up, she caught sight of her companion’s face.

She found him difficult to understand.  There are certain rules of thumb in every art, no doubt,—­even in that most perilous one of lion-taming.  But here was a baffling, individual lion.  She liked him best, she told herself, when he purred platonically, but she could by no means be sure that his subjection was complete.  Sometimes he had scratched her in his play.  And however natural it is to desire a lion for one’s friend, to be eaten is both uncomfortable and inglorious.