It was an odd sensation for Vance, after so many months of seclusion, to find himself again in the harmonious setting of the Tarrants' library, with friendly faces pressing about him and adulation filling the air like a shower of perfumed petals… . There were fewer people than at his former party at Mrs. Tarrant's; there was no Mrs. Pulsifer, there were no ladies in gold brocade to startle and captivate. The men were mostly in day clothes, the few women in simple half-transparent dresses such as Mrs. Tarrant had worn that other evening when he had called her up and found her alone over the fire. Those women dressed like that when they were sitting at home alone in the evening! The fact impressed Vance more than all Mrs. Pulsifer's brocades and jewels—made the distance seem greater between the world of Mrs. Hubbard's third story and that in which a sort of quiet beauty and order were an accepted part of life.

Vance had tried to induce Laura Lou to come with him, but had not been altogether sorry when he failed. He had not forgotten their disastrous lunch at the Tarrants', and he told himself that he hated to see his wife at a disadvantage among people who seemed blind to her beauty, and conscious only of her lack of small talk. But in fact it was only in her absence that he was really himself. Every situation in which she figured instantly became full of pitfalls. The Vance Weston who was her husband was a nervous, self-conscious, and sometimes defiant young man, whereas the other, the real one, was disposed to take things easily, to meet people halfway, and to forget himself completely in the pursuit of any subject that interested him. And here at the Tarrants', as always, the air was full of such subjects, and of a cordiality which instantly broke down his lingering resentments. He felt this even in Tarrant's handshake on the threshold. Tarrant, at the office, was an enigma to Vance. What he had heard of the difficulties of the New Hour had prepared him to find them reflected in his host's manner; but apparently among these people business concerns were left behind after business hours, and Tarrant had never been so friendly and fraternal. He detained Vance for a few moments in talk about the new book ("my wife tells me it's really on the stocks"), and then effaced himself, declaring: "But it's the author of Instead that people want to see; come along to my wife, and she'll introduce you."