Dissolute heretofore only in the negative form, whatever it was that impended threatening him, seemed also to be driving him into an utter and monstrous lack of caution, and—God alone knew how—he had at last done the one thing that he never dreamed of doing. And the knowledge of it, and the fear of it, bit deeper into his shallow soul every hour of the day and night. And over all, vague, indefinite, hung something that menaced all that he cared for most on earth, held most sacred—his social position in the Borough of Manhattan and his father's pride in him and it.
After a while he stood up in his pale blue silken costume of that mincing, smirking century which valued a straight back and a well-turned leg, and very slowly, as though tired, he walked to the door separating his wife's dressing-room from his own.
"May I come in?" he asked.
A maid opened the door, saying that Mrs. Dysart had gone to Miss Quest's room to have her hair powdered. He seated himself; the maid retired.
For a while he sat there, absently playing with his gilt-hilted sword, sombre-eyed, preoccupied, listening to the distant joyous tumult in the house, until quick, light steps and a breezy flurry of satin at the door announced his wife's return.
"Oh," she said coolly; "you?"
That was her greeting; his was a briefer nod.
She went to her mirror and studied her face, trying a patch here, a hint of vermilion there, touching up brow and lashes and the sweet, curling corners of her mouth.
"Well?" she inquired, over her shoulder, insolently.
He got up out of the chair, shut the door, and returned to his seat again.