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SHE had a restless night, for she repeatedly woke up with a start, her eyes opening widely in the darkness of her bedroom; and each time this happened she made the same muffled and incomplete exclamation: “Well, of all——!” Her condition was still as exclamatory as it was anxiously expectant when, just after her nine-o’clock breakfast the next morning, she went to her Georgian drawing-room window and beheld the sterling figure of Mrs. Dodge in the act of hurrying from the sidewalk to the Georgian doorway. Mrs. Cromwell ran to admit her; brought her quickly into the drawing room. “Lydia!” she cried. “What on earth happened?” For, even if telephones had never been invented, the early caller’s expression would have made it plain that there had been a happening.

“I’d have called you up last night,” the perturbed Lydia began;—“but we didn’t get back till one o’clock, and it was too late. In all my life I never had such an experience!”

“You don’t mean at the theatre or——”

“No!” Mrs. Dodge returned, indignantly. “I mean with that woman!”

“With Amelia?”

“With Amelia Battle.”

“But tell me,” Mrs. Cromwell implored. “My dear, I’ve been in such a state of perplexity——”

“Perplexity!” her friend echoed scornfully, and demanded: “What sort of state do you think I’ve been in? My dear, I went to her.”

“To Amelia?”

“To Amelia Battle,” Mrs. Dodge said. “I went straight home after I left you yesterday; but I kept thinking about what we’d seen——”

“You mean——” Mrs. Cromwell paused, and glanced nervously through the glass of the broad-paned window beside which she and her guest had seated themselves. Her troubled eyes came to rest upon the pinkish Italian villa across the street. “You mean what we saw—over there?”

“I mean what was virtually an embrace between Roderick Brooks Battle and Mrs. Sylvester under our eyes,” Mrs. Dodge said angrily. “And she looked us square in the face just before she did it! I also mean that both of them showed by their manner that such caresses were absolutely familiar and habitual—and that was all I needed to prove that the talk about them was only too well founded. So, when I’d thought it over and over—Oh, I didn’t act in haste!—I decided it was somebody’s absolute duty to prepare Amelia for what I plainly saw was coming to her. Did you ever see anything show more proprietorship than Mrs. Sylvester’s fondling of that man’s shoulder? So, as you had declared you wouldn’t go, and although it was late, and Mr. Dodge and I had an important dinner engagement, I made up my mind it had to be done immediately and I went.”

“But what did you tell her?” Mrs. Cromwell implored.

“Never,” said Mrs. Dodge, “never in my life have I had such an experience! I tried to begin tactfully; I didn’t want to give her a shock, and so I tried to begin and lead up to it; but it was difficult to begin at all, because I’d scarcely sat down before she told me my husband had got home and had telephoned to see if I’d reached her house, and he’d left word for me to come straight back home because he was afraid we’d be late for the dinner—and all the time I was trying to talk to her, her maid kept coming in to say he was calling up again, and then I’d have to go and beseech him to let me alone for a minute—but he wouldn’t——”

Mrs. Cromwell was unable to wait in patience through these preliminaries. “Lydia! What did you tell her?”

“I’m trying to explain it as well as I can, please,” her guest returned, irritably. “If I didn’t explain how crazily my husband kept behaving you couldn’t possibly understand. He’d got it into his head that we had to be at this dinner on time, because it was with some people who have large mining interests and——”

“Lydia, what did you——”

“I told you I tried to be tactful,” said Mrs. Dodge. “I tried to lead up to it, and I’ll tell you exactly what I said, though with that awful telephone interrupting every minute it was hard to say anything connectedly! First, I told her what a deep regard both of us had for her.”

“Both of you? You mean you and your husband, Lydia?”

“No, you and me. It was necessary to mention you, of course, because of what we saw yesterday.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Cromwell. “Well, go on.”

“I told her,” Mrs. Dodge continued, complying. “I said nobody could have her interests more at heart than you and I did, and that was why I had come. She thanked me, but I noticed a change in her manner right there. I thought she looked at me in a kind of bright-eyed way, as if she were on her guard and suspicious. I thought she looked like that, and now I’m sure she did. I said, ‘Amelia, I want to put a little problem to you, just to see if you think I’ve done right in coming.’ She said, ‘Yes, Mrs. Dodge,’ and asked me what the problem was.”

“And what was it, Lydia?”

“My dear, will you let me tell you? I said in the kindest way, I said, ‘Amelia, just for a moment let us suppose that my husband were not true to me; suppose he might even be planning to set me aside so that he could marry another woman; and suppose that two women friends of mine, who had my interests dearly at heart, had seen him with this other woman; and suppose her to be a fascinating woman, and that my friends saw with their own eyes that my husband felt her fascination so deeply that anybody could tell in an instant he was actually in love with her;—and, more than that,’ I said, ‘suppose that these friends of mine saw my husband actually exchanging a caress with this woman, and saw him go off driving with her, with her hand on his shoulder and he showing that he liked it there and was used to having it there;—Amelia,’ I said, ‘Amelia, what would you think about the question of duty for those two friends of mine who had seen such a thing? Amelia,’ I said, ‘wouldn’t you think it was the true duty of one or the other of them to come and tell me and warn me and give me time to prepare myself?’ That’s what I said to her.”

“And what did she——”

“She jumped right up and came and threw her arms around me,” said Mrs. Dodge in a strained voice. “I never had such an experience in my life!”

“But what did she say?”

“She said, ‘You poor thing!’ ” Mrs. Dodge explained irascibly. “She didn’t ‘say’ it, either; she shouted it, and she kept on shouting it over and over. ‘You poor thing!’ And when she wasn’t saying that, she was saying she’d never dreamed Mr. Dodge was that sort of a man, and she made such a commotion I was afraid the neighbours would hear her!”

“But why didn’t you——”

“I did!” Mrs. Dodge returned passionately. “I told her a hundred times I didn’t mean Mr. Dodge; but she never gave me a chance to finish a word I began; she just kept taking on about what a terrible thing it must be for me, and how dreadful it was to think of Mr. Dodge misbehaving like that—I tell you I never in my life had such an experience!”

“But why didn’t you make her listen, at least long enough to——”

Mrs. Dodge’s look was that of a person badgered to desperation. “I couldn’t! Every time I opened my mouth she shouted louder than I did! She’d say, ‘You poor thing!’ again, or some more about Mr. Dodge, or she’d want to know if I didn’t need ammonia or camphor, or she’d offer to make beef tea for me! And every minute my husband was making an idiot of himself ringing the Battles’ telephone again. You don’t seem to understand what sort of an experience it was at all! I tell you when I finally had to leave the house she was standing on their front steps shouting after me that she’d never tell anybody a thing about Mr. Dodge unless I wanted her to!”

“It’s so queer!” Mrs. Cromwell said, bewildered more than ever. “If I’d been in your place I know I’d never have come away without making her understand I meant her husband, not mine!”

“ ‘Making her understand!’ ” Mrs. Dodge repeated, mocking her friend’s voice—so considerable was her bitterness. “You goose! You don’t suppose she didn’t understand that, do you?”

“You don’t think——”

“Absolutely! She had been expecting it to happen.”

“What to happen?”

“Somebody’s coming to warn her about Mrs. Sylvester. She did the whole thing deliberately. Absolutely! She understood I was talking about Battle as well as you do now. Of course,” said Mrs. Dodge, “of course she understood!”

Then both ladies seemed to ponder, and for a time uttered various sounds of marvelling; but suddenly Mrs. Cromwell, whose glance had wandered to the window, straightened herself to an attentive rigidity. Her guest’s glance followed hers, and instantly became fixed; but neither lady spoke, for a sharply outlined coincidence was before them, casting a spell upon them and holding them fascinated.

Across the street a French car entered the driveway of the stucco house, and a Venetian Beauty descended, wrapped in ermine too glorious for the time and occasion. Out of the green door of the house eagerly came upon the balustraded terrace a dark man, poetic and scholarly in appearance, dressed scrupulously and with a gardenia, like a bridegroom’s flower, in his coat. In his hand he held an architect’s blue print; but for him and for the azure-eyed lady in ermine this blue print seemed not more important, nor less, than that book in which the two lovers of Rimini read no more one day. They glanced but absently at the blue print; then the man let it dangle from his hand while he looked into the lady’s eyes and she into his; and they talked with ineffable gentleness together.

Here was an Italian episode most romantic in its elements: a Renaissance terrace for the trysting place of a Renaissance widow and a great man, two who met and made love under the spying eyes of female sbirri lurking in a window opposite; but it was Amelia Battle who made the romantic episode into a realistic coincidence. In a vehicle needful of cleansing and polish she appeared from down the long street, sitting in the attentive attitude necessary for the proper guidance of what bore her, and wearing (as Mrs. Cromwell hoarsely informed Mrs. Dodge) “her market clothes.” That she was returning from a market there could be no doubt; Amelia had herself this touch of the Renaissance, but a Renaissance late, northern, and robust. Both of the rear windows of her diligent vehicle framed still-life studies to lure the brush of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century lowland painters: the green tops of sheaved celery nodded there; fat turnips reposed in baskets; purple ragged plumes of beets pressed softly against the glass; jugs that suggested buttermilk and cider, perhaps both, snugly neighboured the hearty vegetables, and made plain to all that the good wife in the forward seat had a providing heart for her man and her household.

The ladies in the Georgian window were truly among those who cared to look. “Oh, my!” Mrs. Cromwell whispered.

Amelia stopped her market machine and jumped out in her market clothes at the foot of the driveway, where stood Mrs. Sylvester’s French car in the care of its two magnificent young men. There was an amiable briskness, cheerful and friendly, in the air with which Amelia trotted up the terrace steps and joined the romantic couple standing beside the balustrade. The three entered into converse.

Mrs. Cromwell and Mrs. Dodge became even more breathless; and then, with amazement, and perhaps a little natural disappointment, they saw that the conversation was not acrimonious—at least, not outwardly so. They marked that Amelia, smiling, took the lead in it, and that she at once set her hand upon her husband’s arm—and in a manner of ownership so masterful and complete that the proprietorship assumed by Mrs. Sylvester in the same gesture, the preceding day, seemed in comparison the temporary claim of a mere borrower. And Mrs. Cromwell marked also a kind of feebleness in the attitude of the Venetian Beauty: Mrs. Sylvester was smiling politely, but there was a disturbed petulance in her smile. Suddenly Mrs. Cromwell perceived that beside Amelia, for all Amelia’s skimpiness, Mrs. Sylvester looked ineffective. With that, glancing at the sturdy figure of Lydia Dodge, Mrs. Cromwell came to the conclusion that since Amelia had been too much for Lydia, Amelia would certainly be too much for Mrs. Sylvester.

“Look!” said Lydia.

Amelia and her husband were leaving the terrace together. Battle walked to the “sedan” with her and held the door open for her; she climbed to the driver’s seat and seemed to wait, with assurance, for him to do more than hold the door. And at this moment the seriousness of his expression was so emphasized that it was easily visible to the Georgian window, though only his profile was given to its view as he looked back, over his shoulder, at the glazing smile of the lady upon the terrace. He seemed to waver, hesitating; and then, somewhat bleakly, he climbed into the “sedan” beside his wife.

“Open it!” Mrs. Dodge was struggling with a catch of the Georgian window.

“What for?”

“She’s shouting again! I’ve got to hear her!” Mrs. Dodge panted; and the window yielded to her exertions.

Amelia’s attitude showed that she was encouraging her machine to begin operations, while at the same time she was calling parting words to Mrs. Sylvester. “Good-bye!” Amelia shouted. “Mr. Battle says he’s been so inspired by your sympathy in his work! Mr. Battle says that’s so necessary to an architect! Mr. Battle says no artist can ever even hope to do anything great without it! Mr. Battle says——”

But here, under the urging of her foot, the engine burst into a shattering uproar: ague seized the car with a bitter grip; convulsive impulses of the apparatus to leap at random were succeeded by more decorous ideas, and then the “sedan” moved mildly forward; the vegetables nodded affably in the windows, and the Battles were borne from sight.

“I see,” said Lydia Dodge, moving back to her chair. “I understand now.”

“You understand what?” her hostess inquired, brusquely, as she closed the Georgian window.

“I understand what I just saw. I can’t tell you exactly how or why, but it was plainly there—in Roderick Brooks Battle’s look, in his slightest gesture. We were absolutely mistaken to think it possible. He’ll never ask Amelia to step aside: he’ll never leave her. And however much he philanders, she’ll never leave him, either. She’ll go straight on the way she’s always gone. He’s shown us that, and she’s shown us that.”

“Well, then,” Mrs. Cromwell inquired; “why is it? You say you understand.”

“It’s because he knows that between his Venetian romance and his press agent he’s got to take the press agent. He’s had sense enough to see he mightn’t be a great man at all without his press agent—and he’d rather keep on being a great man. And Amelia knows she’s getting too skimpy-looking to get a chance to make a great man out of anybody else; so she wouldn’t let me tell her about him, because she’s going to stick to him!”

At this Mrs. Cromwell made gestures of negation and horror, though in the back of her mind, at that moment, she was recalling her yesterday’s thought that Lydia’s sense of duty was really Lydia’s pique. “Lydia Dodge!” she cried, “I won’t listen to you! Don’t you know you’re taking the lowest, unchristianest, vilest possible view of human nature?”

Mrs. Dodge looked guilty, but she decided to offer a plea in excuse. “Well, I suppose that may be true,” she said. “But sometimes it does seem about the only way to understand people!”