the money won at Canary Cottage and used it to lease the elaborately furnished Sound-view "cottage" at Hedgewood. It was now a month since she had leased the cottage and Carmelita Drake was giving a birthday party at her charming Long Island country home. She was hesitating whether to place her husband or her closest other male friend, the society favorite, Prince Rao-Singh, at her side. A picture of loveliness in a red, velvety evening gown that set off her black hair and exquisite creamy skin in all its richness, she bent over the white napery of the table linen toying with two place cards.
Finally she decided it would be Dudley. She had not seen him in a week and, though it was not the thing in Lucy Hodge's and her set, who were to compose the other guests at her birthday dinner, to sit next to one's own husband, she felt that in this case she could make an exception, although it was true that Dudley was not lively company these days. He did not seem to be at home among her gay friends upon the occasion of his week-end visits and she knew that the arrangement under which they had been living during the month she had been occupying the country house and he had been staying at their Greenwich Village apartment alone, did not please him.
It was not alone the fact that he was em-
