IV + 

Mrs. Lester’s living-room was in festive array for a very gala occasion. The occasion was Mrs. Lester’s seventy-fifth birthday. When Jane entered the room with Stephen and the children, she could not see her hostess, at first, in the crowd of people who were laughing and talking around the hearth beneath the Murillo Madonna. Mr. and Mrs. Ward were there, and Flora and Mr. Furness, and Isabel and Robin, and Rosalie and Freddy Waters, of course. Edith and her husband had come on from Cleveland for the celebration and Muriel had invited Cyril Fortune. Bert Lancaster was not yet out of his bed. Rosalie’s daughter was in school in Paris and Edith’s son was in Oxford, but young Albert was there, home from Saint Paul’s for the Christmas vacation, so Isabel had brought Jack and Belle and Jane had brought Cicily and Jenny and little Steve. It was little Steve’s first dinner-party. The children were to eat at a separate table in a corner of the dining-room. + 

Mrs. Lester was sitting in her wheelchair on one corner of the hearthrug. Enormously fat and somewhat crippled with gout, she had not left her wheelchair for years. She still gave parties, however, great gay parties, and was pushed to the head of her dining-room table to preside over them with all her old-time gaiety. Her three dark-haired daughters and their attendant husbands had never ceased to flutter about her. They weren’t dark-haired any longer, of course. Edith was really white-headed, slim, worn, and distinguished at forty-three. Pretty Rosalie was growing grey, and even Muriel had one white Whistler lock, that she rather exploited, in the centre of her dark pompadour. Mrs. Lester herself, with her straight snow-white hair, her wrinkled, yellow face, and her great gaunt nose hooked over her ridiculous cascade of double chins, had come to look much more Jewish with advancing years. In spite of her invincible gaiety, her large dark eyes, with yellow whites, were shadowed with racial sadness. No eyes, thought Jane, were ever as beautiful as Jewish eyes. Mrs. Lester’s had always touched her profoundly. They were twinkling now, up at Mr. Ward, as she sat enthroned on the hearthrug. An enormous bowl of seventy-five American beauties nodded over her snowy head. Jane kissed her with real emotion. Then turned to Muriel. + 

“How is Bert tonight?” she asked. + 

“Oh⁠—Bert’s fine,” said Muriel easily. “He’s going to sit up next week. They’ve given him exercises for his arm. They think he’ll get some motion back.” + 

“I see,” said Isabel, at Muriel’s elbow, “you asked Cyril to fill his place.” + 

“Cyril’s always helpful,” grinned Muriel shamelessly. “He does what he can.” + 

“Who else is coming?” asked Isabel interestedly. “You’re still a man short.” + 

“Jimmy Trent,” said Muriel, smiling. “I asked him for our Jane.” + 

Jane glanced casually at her father, then turned, to smell an American beauty, rather elaborately. She had not expected this. She had not seen Jimmy since she had turned away from him, five weeks before, under the apple tree in the Lakewood garden. He had telephoned three times, but Jane had not gone to the telephone. He had not written, for which fact Jane was devoutly thankful. She felt somehow very unequal to answering that unwritten letter and still more unequal to the melodramatic gesture of sending it back unread. She had known, of course, that she would have to meet Jimmy sometime, but she had not anticipated that meeting at Mrs. Lester’s seventy-fifth birthday-party. She was wondering just how to handle it when Jimmy appeared at the living-room door. + 

Muriel moved quickly to meet him and Jane slipped quietly away from Mrs. Lester’s side before he came up to present his compliments. She began talking to Freddy Waters in a great burst of gaiety. In a moment the butler appeared at the dining-room door. He announced dinner and moved to push Mrs. Lester’s chair in to the table. Almost immediately Jane heard Jimmy’s voice at her elbow. + 

“I found your name in my envelope in the dressing-room, Jane,” he said, “and you can bet your life I was glad to see it there.” He offered his arm with a smile. His eyes, however, looked very serious. Freddy Waters had gone off in quest of Isabel. The dinner-party was passing into the dining-room, two by two. + 

Jane rested her fingertips on Jimmy’s black broadcloth sleeve. She felt there was nothing whatever to say to him. Jimmy looked anxiously down at her as they joined the little procession. Jane saw her father watching them as he offered his arm to Edith. Mr. Furness had gone in with Mrs. Lester. + 

“Can’t you forgive me, Jane?” asked Jimmy earnestly, as they entered the dining-room. + 

“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I still don’t understand at all how you could have done such a thing.” + 

“Don’t you, Jane?” said Jimmy wistfully. “Don’t you, really?” + 

“I don’t understand how you could have done it to me,” said Jane. + 

“I didn’t know,” said Jimmy, pulling out her chair for her as they reached the table⁠—“I didn’t know that you would take it quite so seriously.” + 

Jane seated herself in silence. + 

“I’ve taken it seriously myself,” said Jimmy, “since I did it.” + 

He sat down at her side. + 

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Jane severely. + 

“And you’ll forgive me?” said Jimmy. + 

“I don’t know,” said Jane again. She turned to look into his contrite eyes. There was something irresistibly funny about a penitent faun. Jane could not help smiling. Jimmy drew a long breath at the sight of her smile. + 

“You have forgiven me!” he said triumphantly. + 

Jane saw her father looking at him from across the table. She wished that Jimmy had not spoken quite so loudly. Then despised herself for the wish. + 

“Don’t let’s talk about it any longer,” she said evenly. “It happened, and I wish it hadn’t. But it doesn’t do any good to go on harping on it.” + 

“I don’t want to harp on it!” cried Jimmy jubilantly. “I don’t want to harp on anything you don’t want to hear.” He was looking at her now, with just the same old look of friendly admiration. “Let’s talk about the weather.” + 

They did, with mock solemnity. Then they talked of other things. Of Jimmy’s reviews, which were making quite a sensation in the Daily News; of Agnes’s play, which-was already half-written; of Cicily, shaking her dandelion head at Jack at the foot of the children’s table; of Mrs. Lester, nodding her white one at Mr. Furness at the head of theirs; of the charms of fourteen and of the charms of seventy-five. Jane was quite sorry when Mrs. Lester turned the conversation at the beginning of the salad course and she had to begin to talk to Edith’s husband of the charms of living in Cleveland⁠—if there were any, which Jane very much doubted. + 

Later, when the men joined the women in the living-room, Jane was rather surprised to find herself talking to her father. He sat down beside her on the green brocade sofa with a sigh of satisfaction. + 

“I don’t see enough of you, kid,” he said cheerfully. “Nor enough of Stephen. What with all the grandchildren, I hardly spoke to either of you on Christmas Day. I’m going to put in the evening catching up on what you’ve been doing.” + 

“I haven’t been doing much,” said Jane. “Just Christmas shopping.” + 

“Many town parties?” asked Mr. Ward. + 

“None in the holidays,” said Jane. “I’m too busy with the children.” + 

“Much company in the country?” + 

“No one but the children’s friends.” + 

“Jimmy been out often?” + 

Jane looked straight into her father’s eyes. + 

“He hasn’t been out since that luncheon on Thanksgiving Day,” she said. + 

Mr. Ward settled back against the sofa cushions. + 

“What do you hear from Agnes, kid?” he asked. + 