The door opened on the softly lit anteroom. A maid took his hat and coat, and said: "This way;" and there she sat, by the fire in the library, alone. She wore something dark and lacy, through which her upper arms showed; and the sober book-lined room, with its shaded lamps, and a few lilylike crimson flowers in a tall jar, seemed a part of her, the necessary background to her aloof and reticent grace. Vance recalled the room in which he had left Laura Lou, and at the same moment, joined to that evocation, came the vision of this woman turning from him, with a careless pleasantry, in that other room at the Willows where he had cast his soul at her feet… . No, there could be no common meeting ground for him and Halo Tarrant; the conditions of life divided them too sharply. Material well-being, security from hunger and debt, made people callous and unfeeling, perhaps without any fault of their own. But he had been right in deciding not to see her again, and wrong in yielding to the impulse which had led him to her tonight.

"Vance—how glad I am!" she said, rising and holding out her two hands in the old friendly way.

He stood near the door, bound hand and foot in coils of awkwardness and resentment. "You went to see my wife today," he began, and stopped, not knowing how to go on.

Mrs. Tarrant raised her eyebrows slightly. "Yes. It was so long since I'd had any news of either of you. I thought she was not looking well the day she lunched here … and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do… ."

"No. There's nothing you can do."

He felt the surprise and pain in her eyes without daring to meet them. "I'm sorry," she rejoined simply. "But I'm glad you've come this evening. Sit down, won't you, Vance? I'm all alone—Lewis is at a man's dinner, and I thought I'd snatch a quiet evening with my books."

Vance still hung in the middle of the wide space between the door and the fireplace. "I guess I won't interrupt you then," he said, still at a loss for his next phrase.

"Interrupt me? How can you say that? You know I've wanted a talk with you for a long time."

"No, I didn't know … I mean … " He broke off suddenly. "My wife wasn't well when you called. You oughtn't to have gone up into her room without her asking you," he blurted out.

"Vance!"

"Can't you see how people feel," he continued passionately, "when somebody like you, coming out of this—" he took in the room with a gesture of reproach, "when you come into the kind of place we have to live in, and try to pretend that there can ever be anything in common between our lives and yours?"