great deal to talk about. And don't change. I like you in that."
"I won't be long." She went to the door and then turned. "I'm being taken out to dinner by my own brother," she said softly. "You make me feel quite—respectable, Eric."
Her last words hurt him. If there had been any one with him he would have said as she left the room:
"Good God! The pity of it!"
It wasn't age he meant. He cared as little for that as most intelligent men. Connie had lost her youth. That was to be expected. But she had never gained its far more interesting successor, character. It was that he missed. She was spiritually, mentally and morally down at the heel. Her face was a weary mask, her yellow hair had known the uses of peroxide as well as of adversity, and her blue eyes, paler than her brother's, looked out, without expression, from a rim of carelessly darkened lashes. The frank vulgarity of her scarlet lips revolted him.
"All that," he said to himself, "to win a—Chiozzi!" He had hurried her off to get her hat because he couldn't bear to talk to her in that room of childish memories. It brought back to him too clearly the girl of fifteen, with her exqui-
