"But I haven't the least use for a car, dearie," she said. It was not with deliberation that she ignored altogether what her mother had been saying as to Judd; it was simply that she could not bring herself to offer any comment on that subject. "I am a walker; every day at Miss Mayhew's I did ten miles—even in rain and snow, and it is clouding for snow now, I think. You will not mind my going out for a long walk? I am wild for air and exercise."
Mrs. Treharne was grateful to the girl for turning it off in that way even if, by so doing, Louise indicated that she was of more than one mind with respect to what had been told her regarding Judd. And Mrs. Treharne, careless and indifferent as she was, could not visualize her daughter in the gigantic yellow-bodied Judd car without being swept by a feeling that was distinctly to her credit.
Laura Stedham, over her cocoa, was weaving with careless rapidity through her morning mail when John Blythe arrived shortly before noon. Laura's apartment overlooked the west side of the Park. Its dominant color scheme now was based upon a robin's egg blue; but there was a jest among Laura's friends that they never had seen her apartment look the same on two visits running; they declared that every time Laura left the city for as long a period as a fortnight, she left orders with her decorator to have her apartment completely done over so that even she herself quite failed to recognize it when she returned.
Blythe, throwing his snow-sprinkled stormcoat over the extended arm of Laura's brisk maid, strolled over to a window and watched the still, unflurried flakes sift through the bare branches of the Park trees. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and his eyes were so unusually meditative that Laura, used to his absorption as she was, laughed quietly as she turned from her escritoire.
"Yes, John, it is snowing," she said, thrusting away a heap of still-unopened letters.
Blythe turned to her with a twinkling look of inquiry.
"I thought perhaps you might not have noticed it," chaffed Laura, "seeing that you were looking right at it. You require an excessive amount of forgiveness from your friends. I believe you have not even seen me yet, although I've employed a good hour that I might have spent in bed in devising additional fascinations in anticipation of your coming."
"Meaning, for one thing, I suppose," said Blythe with rather an absorbed smile, "that—that—"
"Don't you dare call it a kimono," interrupted Laura. "It's a mandarin's coat—a part of the Peking loot. Of course you are crazy over it?"