to write her a tragedy, Grover looked up to see Floss beckoning to him from a table where she was refreshing herself. To speak with him privately she dismissed her complaisant prince, who crossed the room to greet the Marchesa's Spaniard. The Spaniard, Grover had learned, was a highly prosperous painter named Peñaverde, a name which awakened an echo in his mind but which he couldn't place.
"Don't stand too near the fireplace, darling," Floss called out after her husband, "You might melt and run in." This was in allusion to a favorite household jest which had it that the prince was made of wax and spent all his off hours as a lay figure in the window of a tailor shop in the rue Tronchet.
"Have a drink," she proposed to Grover, then surprised him by asking him what was the matter.
"Nothing that I know of. Why?"
Floss studied him with an impersonal partiality as she sipped tea. She seemed to be bringing something out from the private apartments of her mind which were usually as open to view as her house. "When you smile," she finally said, "it's like flashlight photographs—then you go all dark. I've noticed it often, honey, and I think it's too bad. Life's not worth it, you know; the thing to do is grab it up, dirt and all. Sometimes I think you wait for it to come in on a platter, all dainty and tasty."
"It's not entirely that," said Grover thoughtfully, and the sudden earnestness of their talk struck him as
