Captain Utterbourne, with faint , his lips to a smile of finely etched , withdrew; but[31] he turned back a moment and faced King with the most affectionate and least complex expression of which he was capable.  
“By the way, would you mind dropping in at my office tomorrow? You know where we are—Hyde’s. There’s something I’d like to go into—h’m?” His look subtly completed the sentence; for Captain Utterbourne had perfected the art of suspension. Mr. King agreed eagerly, though he kept his monocle spinning in a sophisticated and idle fashion. Utterbourne had been but glancingly arrested in his departure—all this was very high art. With a faint bow to Stella, which delicately her for having been the means of interrupting him at a moment when he had begun to open his mind to his new favourite, the Captain was gone; and they saw him pause, in passing, to his sister , just glancingly, as she sat in a little whirl of gentle gossip near the punch bowl.
 
“May I sit down here?” suggested Mr. King ; and found her looking up at him almost coyly, as though having tête-à-têtes with men of his calibre were indeed an established phase of her life. But naturally her heart was fluttering very much.
 
He talked easily and in a conventionally manner: had been noticing her all evening, he said—though as a matter of fact, he was but recently arrived. And she, almost painfully excited, played back in quite the same spirit, though it cost a greater effort. Mr. King was so bewilderingly nice that she used every gift in an effort to please and impress him: yes, just giddily let herself go.
 
They talked of pleasant immediacies. When she dropped her handkerchief, he stooped to pick it up; and when he handed it to her something—something reminiscent—made her feel as she had felt when the introduction was taking place. Certainly no one had ever before treated her with such a wealth of worldly .
 
“Oh, thank you!” she fluttered; and he returned a little[32] gesture. Then another flash of reminiscence brought a gay cry to her lips. “Oh, now I know! We’ve met before—though I’m sure you’ll never remember!” And as she of the episode of the rescued fashion page, Stella saw again a handsome stranger emerging from the ............