The glamour had faded suddenly from his dreams, as if a bat's wing had fluttered overhead, and in his new mood, he felt a resurgence of his old self-consciousness.

He was provoked by the suspicion that he had shown less as a coming dramatist than as a present fool, and he contrasted his own awkwardness with Adams' whimsical ease of manner.

Did a woman ever forget how a man appeared when she first met him?
Would any amount of fame to-morrow obliterate from Laura's memory his embarrassment of yesterday?
He had heard that the surface impression was what counted in the feminine mind, and this made him think enviously, for a minute, of Perry Bridewell--of his handsome florid face and his pleasant animal magnetism.

Perry was stupid and an egoist, and yet he had heard that Mrs.Bridewell, for all her beauty and her wit, adored him, while he openly neglected her.

Was the secret of success, after all, simply an indifference to everyone's needs except one's own?
or was it rather the courage to impress the world that one's own were the only needs that counted?
He was late for luncheon but his mother had waited for him, and he found when he entered the drawing room that Christina Coles was with her.