that reason had put on all her jewelry,—he nursed a growing resentment against Casimir's verdict. If there was one thing by which he didn't want to be identified, it was a nice little talent. That seemed to doom him to the role of an eternal gracer of tea tables. Cast down by his lack of progress, filled with frustration, out of touch with himself and life, he decided one cold afternoon of February to look up Léon. For weeks he had been lying low, eating in cab-drivers' resorts, washing his own socks and handkerchiefs, all because of his Boston bank's maddening accuracy in arithmetic. Now that his American clothes had worn thin it was not going to be so easy to make ends meet on his small income. But this morning a cheque had arrived, and he had rushed out to draw some cash. In the same mail had come a letter from Rhoda Marple, the first in months. She announced that she was departing for Egypt with the Pearns,—"and you know what I think of mummies," she had commented, in a tone of despondency which chimed with his own. The only mitigating circumstance of her journey was that Mrs. Peperell, who would be in Cairo, would see to it that she had an opportunity to go about with young people.
Not a word about Eric, Grover noted, as he walked to the apartment facing the Parc Monceau. The most bothersome as well as the most puzzling element in his relationship with Rhoda was the fact that he could never reconcile himself to the thought of her marrying any man he knew, though heaven was his witness that
