"Won't you stay and have supper with us? Now that we have you here, we'd like to keep you."
Hilda uttered effusive regrets and Levis looked at her curiously. Her expression had changed; it was no longer that of slightly bored curiosity, but of anger, sharp and unpleasant. Her eyes darted to her husband, then back to Levis, and then back again to the little table where Stephen and Ellen stood together.
"Oh, thank you. It's really very good of you, but it's impossible, really. We have guests ourselves this evening. We should be going now. We sail for Europe on Tuesday."
"Medical convention at Vienna?" asked Levis, his keen, curious eye fixed upon her.
"Yes; that is, my husband is going there. I'm going to Paris for clothes. I don't like conventions. Nor medicine," said Hilda as she rose. She laid one hand in the other and kneaded them together in a strange gesture.
"It's time to go!" said she.
Hearing the sharpened voice, Ellen turned swiftly. How fairylike this stranger was, now that she was standing! She determined in a flash to live on bread and water, to take some sort of medicine, to do anything to resemble her. She saw the small, arched foot, set in absurd, high-heeled shoes—how did she manage to stand, and how to walk? But she did both gracefully. Ellen had heard the invitation; she hastened to second it.
"I do wish you'd stay!"
Stephen looked down at her. There was a quality in Ellen which was hard to describe unless one said that she gave herself with every smile. He had dismissed the thought of children as he had dismissed his father's creed, but from his deeper consciousness an instinctive longing rose. "I wish I had her or one like her!" said he to himself with sudden startled hunger.
"Won't you stay?" said Ellen to him.