esque fact in all Algebra and you had to do problems for four years to get to it,—they were equal.
Although the good American cocktails had brought him out of his gloom and he was chatting glibly enough with Mamie, his mind was on anything but her ships and shoes and sealing-wax, her impressions of current plays and operas and singers, It was largely on the speculative ocean of what lay behind the pressed-in glints in the eyes of the girl in nasturtium velvet, and behind the broad, pressed-in smile on her odd white face. He could no more keep his mind off her than in a theatre he could keep his eyes off the stage, no matter what detracting things he might tell himself about the piece and the performance. Moreover he knew he would leave her presence with a similar sense of the dullness and drabness of the outside world.
If Olga weighed Sweden and Spain in the balance and found each a little wanting, as Grover dared to guess, how would she react to America? Of her reaction to Mamie Mangum she had made no secret: she had looked around once, in reply to an inane inquiry in Mamie's most foreign French, said "Parfaitement, Mademoiselle," looked slowly past her, around the circle and back to the Spaniard, and both she and Mamie knew that there was not another inch of common ground for them on the face of the earth. Her reaction to her American hostess, on the other hand, was warm and crisp. Floss had leaned across Don
