They made room for her to pass and she descended without looking back again, and found her door. She snapped the light switch viciously. Then she sighed again.
It’s being an artist, she told herself again, helplessly.
......
“Damn, damn, damn,” said Mrs. Wiseman slapping her cards on the table. The victrola record had played itself through and into an endless monotonous rasping. “Mark, stop that thing, as you love God. I’m far enough behind, without being jinxed.” The ghostly poet rose obediently and Mrs. Wiseman swept her hand amid the cards on the table, scattering them. “I’m not going to spend any more of my life putting little spotted squares of paper in orderly sequence for three dull people, not to-night, anyway. Gimme a cigarette, some one.” She thrust her chair back and Mr. Talliaferro opened his case to her. She took one and lifted her foot to the other knee and scratched a match on the sole of her slipper. “Let’s talk a while instead.”
“Where on earth did you get those garters?” Miss Jameson asked curiously.
“These?” she flipped her skirt down. “Why? Don’t you like ’em?”
“They are a trifle out of the picture, on you.”
“What kind would you suggest for me? Pieces of colored string?”
“You ought to have black ones clasped with natural size red roses,” Mark Frost told her. “That’s what one would expect to find on you.”
“Wrrrong, me good man,” Mrs. Wiseman answered dramatically. “You have wronged me foully. . . . Where’s Mrs. Maurier, I wonder?”
“She must have caught somebody. That Gordon man, per-
