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“Make me another cocktail, dad,” he said. “Do! We couldn’t get gin like that in Italy.”

It was a relief to Stacey when Julie and her husband arrived. For he craved of his sister now precisely what had irked him in her formerly—her apparent absence of any inner life and her absorbed occupation with externals. If any one had protested that she probably did have an inner life he would have assented cheerfully. He simply did not want to know about it or about any one else’s.

The Prouts were a little late (Julie was always a little late) and Mr. Carroll, who had been fidgeting with increasing exasperation, greeted his daughter wrathfully.

“Confound it, Julie! Can’t you be on time for once in a way? Isn’t it as easy to get here at seven as at seven-ten?”

“Well, now, daddy, it wasn’t my fault,” said Julie, her voice and eyes full of hurt innocence, while her husband grinned. “I was all ready and then at the very last moment—”

“Pshaw!” her father interrupted. “If only you wouldn’t always have an excuse! Come on in! Everything will be cold, of course.”