Then this, too, had passed, and, with the short memory of city livers, Gerty had forgotten alike the gossip and the heroines of the gossip, until she noted now the lines of deeper harassment in Kemper's face.

These coming so suddenly after six months of Europe caused her to wonder if the affair with the prima donna had been really an entanglement of the heart.
"Well, I may not be as fast as an automobile," she presently admitted.
"But you're twice as dangerous," he retorted gaily.
For an instant the pleasant humour in his eyes held her speechless.
"Ah, well, you aren't a coward," she answered coolly enough at last.
Then her tone changed, and as she settled herself under her fur rugs she made a cordial inviting gesture.

"Come in with me and I'll take you to Laura Wilde's," she said; "she's a genius, and you ought to know her before the world finds her out." With a protesting laugh Kemper held up his gloved finger.
"God forbid!" he exclaimed with a shrug which struck her as a slightly foreign affectation.

"The lady may be a female Milton, but Perry tells me that she isn't pretty." He touched her hand again, met her indignant defence of Laura with a nod of smiling irony, and then, as her carriage started, he turned rapidly down Sixty-ninth Street in the direction of the Park.
In Gerty the chance meeting had awakened a slumbering interest which she had half forgotten, and as she drove down Fifth Avenue toward Laura's distant home she found herself wondering idly if he would let many days go by before he came again.

The thought was still in her mind when the carriage turned into Gramercy Park and stopped before the old brown house hidden in creepers in which Laura lived.