looking at him sullenly for a moment. Suddenly she laughed her short and angry laugh and turned away toward Elinor, saying:
“God! Here’s the second! Don’t they make a pair!”
“But my dear!” cried Elinor with a light, gay malice. “Where is the top-hat? Where are the striped trousers and the morning coat? Where is the duelling case with the revolvers?… All right, Monsieur D’Artagnan,” she called up towards the balcony ironically. “Your friend Monsieur Porthos has arrived… and breakfast is ready, darling! What’s that they say about an army?” she innocently inquired, “—that it ought not to fight on an empty stomach?… Ahem!” she cleared her throat. “Will Monsieur D’Artagnan condescend to have the company of two frail women for breakfast on the morning of the great affair… or does Monsieur prefer to be left alone with his devoted second to discuss—ahem! ahem!… the final arrangements?”
Starwick made no reply, until he had come down the steps.
“You can stay, if you want to,” he said indifferently. “I shall have nothing to say to them, anyway.” Turning to Eugene, he said with magnificent, bored weariness: “Find out what they want. Let me know what they want to do.”
“B—but, what do you want me to say to them, Frank? What shall I tell them?”
“Anything,” said Starwick indifferently. “Anything you like. Say that I will meet him anywhere—on any terms—whatever they like. Let them settle it their own way.”
He picked up a spoon and started to eat his orange.
“Oh, Frank, you idiot!” cried Elinor, seizing him by the hair and shaking his head. “Don’t be stupid! You know you’re not going on with this farce!”
He lifted quiet, wearily patient eyes and looked at her.
“Sorry!” he said. “But I’ve got to. If that’s what he wants, I really must, I owe the man that much—I really do, you know!”
Breakfast then proceeded in a painful and uneasy silence, broken only by Elinor’s malicious thrusts, and maintained by Starwick’s weary and impassive calm.
At ten o’clock there were steps along the alley-way outside, someone mounted the veranda, and the studio bell jangled. The two women exchanged uneasy looks, Starwick got up quietly and turned away, and in a moment Elinor called out sharply: “Entrez.”
The door opened and a man entered the room. He wore striped trousers
