JT&an
 
 T17 
 
 utterfly 
 Man
 
 "They, too, were seen together very often of late" 
 
 (page 58)
 
 7 
 
 THE 
 BUTTERFLY MAN 
 
 BY GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON 
 
 "Author of "The Purple Parasol," "Jane Cable," 
 "The Flyers," "The Alternative," Etc. 
 
 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 BY HARRISON FISHER 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 Vti 
 
 *2? 

 
 o* 
 
 Gntents 
 
 II IN LOMBARD AVENUE 
 
 III THE FRIENDSHIP 
 
 IV COMPOSITE HEROISM 
 
 V A WEEK-END 
 
 VI THE INCONSIDERATE WORLD . . 
 
 VII CONTEMPLATING THE CHRYSALIS . 
 
 PAGE 
 II 
 
 30 
 
 47 
 
 6 +M 
 79 
 
 no
 
 < *=*? 
 
 II lustrations 
 
 " They, too, were seen together very often 
 
 of late" ..... (page 58) Frontispiece 
 
 " In a tete-a-tete he had no equals " . Facing page 22 
 
 " For a long time they were silent " . . " " 68 
 
 ^M^ 
 
 " She was compelled to speak plainly and 
 
 without mercy " ....... " "114
 
 ^-^Srt^v 

 
 
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 E?f> 
 
 Butterfly Man 
 
 vX ^ 
 
 sir 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SEDGEWICK BLYNN 
 
 THE dinner was being given by Mrs. Cortlandt 
 Trend ; that, in itself, was sufficient proof of 
 its smartness if not entirely establishing its 
 excellence along another line. 
 
 Mrs. Trend was parsimonious. She had had the bad 
 luck to be born in severe poverty; the silver dollar of 
 her childhood days was a very portentous thing; she 
 never quite got over the feeling that it was a portentous 
 thing. But, despite the fact that she pinched here and 
 there and looked to it that there was no unnecessary 
 waste, her " affairs" were very smart. Mr. Trend was 
 very rich and their home was in truth a mansion. It is 
 of small consequence that Mr. Trend went to bed early; 
 he was never missed. He went to bed early because he 
 had to get up early. His presence at one of her func 
 tions would have caused no little surprise and specula 
 tion among her guests, surprise to those who knew 
 him personally or by sight, and speculation among those 
 who did not. 
 
 "I saw that chap here once last winter." is the historic 
 remark once made by young Gately, who looked upon 

 
 [12] 
 
 Trend for the second time in his life. "What s his 
 name ?" 
 
 "Trend," replied some one succinctly. 
 
 "Any relation to her?" 
 
 "I think so. He s her husband." 
 
 "Lord, how he must hate us!" murmured Gately, 
 speaking more truth than he knew. 
 
 Mrs. Cortlandt Trend was one of those women who 
 never has an extra bottle of wine opened unless she is 
 sure it will be drunk. It was a habit that came with her 
 from the suburbs, where she was born and bred, and 
 where they open wine with prayer and finally drink it 
 as an epilogue. With all of Trend s millions and in 
 spite of ten years struggle for social leadership, there 
 were a few tricks she could not forget. Her Bridge 
 prizes were costly and lavish, her cotillion favours beauti 
 ful and rare, her service elegant and faultless, her 
 beauty and her wit beyond reproach, and yet well, 
 the suburb had taught her that it was a sin to waste. 
 It was an established fact not a confidential rumour, 
 by any means that Mrs. Trend s dinners were attrac 
 tive but not at all satisfying. And yet it was very much 
 in order to covet an invitation to her admirably con 
 ducted establishment. Her entertainments were so 
 frequent that poor Trend, who breakfasted before she 
 was awake and who lunched in town, seldom saw her 
 unless she were of a mind to come to his room, where 
 he dined alone and in the simple splendour of a smoking 
 jacket. Not more than three times a year was it neces- 
 
 r
 
 sary for Trend to shave himself in the evening, for which 
 he was devoutly thankful. 
 
 Three persons were chatting in a far corner of the 
 drawing-room two men and a woman. Already it 
 was far past the dinner hour, and these were Bridge 
 fiends. Their hostess, serene and unruffled, went by. 
 
 "It s half-past eight, Mrs. Trend," ventured one of 
 the men, with the privilege of an old acquaintance 
 who takes the liberty of being annoyed if he feels 
 like it. 
 
 "Isn t it shocking?" she exclaimed, pausing. "But 
 the dinner won t be spoiled, George. When I invite 
 Sedgewick Blynn to dinner I invariably allow half an 
 hour for his shortcoming. Eight means half past to 
 him." 
 
 "Why don t you operate on a schedule that might 
 lead him to infer that half-past seven is eight?" asked 
 George Pennington. 
 
 "You mean, ask him for seven thirty when I want 
 him at eight ? My dear man, he d never forgive me," 
 she said as she passed on. 
 
 "We might have known it was Blynn," growled Stan 
 ley, when she was out of hearing. "He makes it a busi 
 ness of being late everywhere." After a moment s re 
 flection, he went on: "It s not a bad way, either, if one 
 wants to keep constantly in the limelight. Here we are 
 kept waiting half an hour for whom ? There s only 
 one name on our lips Sedgewick Blynn s. It s a 
 bully way of advertising." 

 
 
 [14] 
 
 "Jjje s very agreeable and amusing, no matter how 
 late he may be," said Miss Carnahan. 
 
 "Oh, we 11 grant you that. No well regulated party 
 seems complete without him these days. He does n t let 
 lost time count against him. We may revile him foi 
 being late but we rejoice when he is with us. And, to 
 save my soul, I can t precisely see where his charm 
 comes in," said Pennington grudgingly. Pennington 
 needed a cigarette. 
 
 "It s his everlasting good humour," said Stanley, 
 "and a certain form of modesty that baffles you at all 
 turns. *If you curse him, you re sorry for it when he 
 smiles that winning smile of his and shakes your hand 
 as if he was never so happy as when greeting you. You 
 like him in spite of yourself and sometimes you wonder 
 why." 
 
 "I never wonder why," protested the young woman, a 
 bud of the season. "He s so nice, and he is good- 
 looking." 
 
 "Rather stands us middle-aged mummies against the 
 wall, I take it, Miss Carnahan. You are very unkind. 
 Remember our age," said Pennington. "Let me see, 
 is n t he the son of old Henry Blynn, who used to be 
 cashier at the Union Commercial ?" 
 
 "Yes. Henry died three or four years ago. Sedge- 
 wick lives out in Lombard Avenue with his mother and 
 his two sisters you remember the Blynn girls, fifteen 
 or eighteen years back ? Old maids now." 
 
 "Perfectly. You see, Miss Carnahan, I m somewhat 

 
 [15] 
 
 of a stranger in an old familiar land. I went abrcfad to 
 live ten years ago. Many things have happened here 
 since then. One of them is Sedgewick Blynn. He 
 was n t known in my day. Now he is the rage." 
 
 "He s asked everywhere," agreed Miss Carnahan, as 
 if nothing more was to be desired. 
 
 "As I remember his father, Stanley, the old man was 
 er something of a nose-grinder. Always grubbing 
 for both ends. Did he leave much of an estate ?" 
 
 "The house in Lombard Avenue, I believe, and 
 enough for Mrs. Blynn and the girls to get on with in a 
 very modest way." 
 
 "This young chap seems to have made something of 
 himself, then, I take it. It costs money to live up to 
 these friends of his. Gad, his dad was n t able to go 
 in for society in any shape or form. One never heard 
 of the Blynns in my day. Nice people, Miss Carnahan, 
 believe me, but " Pennington hesitated. 
 
 "They went to church regularly," supplied Stanley. 
 "So did we in those days. It had something to do with 
 fashion, I believe. Every one who went to St. Mark s 
 knew the Blynn girls." 
 
 "What is Sedgewick s business?" asked Pennington. 
 
 "He is a broker full-fledged now, I believe. Grad 
 uated not long ago from Warmley & Broad s offices. 
 He s gone in for himself lately. Offices in the Commer 
 cial. But, I 11 leave it to Miss Carnahan, his opera 
 tions seem to be chiefly in presents, not futures. Am I 
 not right?"
 
 " 
 
 " 
 
 "If you mean to be paradoxicaf, I must confess I m 
 horribly stupid. I only know that he s very successful. 
 He told me last night of a deal he d made in copper 
 or was it brass ? It " 
 
 "Brass, more than likely," said Stanley drily. 
 
 She did not feel the sting, but smiled serenely and 
 went on : "I know so little about what you men trade in. 
 Is it brass ? Well, Mr. Blynn was saying at Mrs. Grant s 
 last night that he d pulled off a big deal in something. 
 Yesterday morning at the musicale he told me he was 
 sure to pull it off, and he did, you see. He s quite 
 musical, you know." 
 
 "Pulled it off in the afternoon, I see." 
 
 "I m not sure," she said doubtfully. "He went 
 out to Briarly on the one o clock train to skate with the 
 Ralphs. Dear me, how much he does ! He was nearly 
 an hour late at Mrs. Grant s dinner last night. Did 
 you ever know of any one so popular, Mr. Stanley ? " 
 
 At that moment Mr. Blynn was announced. There 
 was an almost audible sigh of relief; the "Bridgers" 
 stirred hopefully, and more than one gave him an amiable 
 smile as he crossed to Mrs. Trend. 
 
 "I m awfully sorry, Mrs. Trend," he murmured, as 
 she gave him her hand. As usual, he was somewhat 
 breathless, as if haste had tried not to make waste. 
 She smiled graciously and tapped his arm with her fan. 
 Whereupon he was more than ever contrite; he went so 
 far as to smile rather pathetically. "A representative 
 from Mr. Morgan s office came in late this afternoon in 
 
 
 V5V 
 
 iff
 
 [I?] 
 
 respect to a very important matter I am looking after 
 for him. Pon my word, I could n t break away from 
 him. After all, you see, Mrs. Trend, I m rather er 
 well, you might say, beholden to Mr. Morgan for a 
 fair share of my business these days. I I, well, you 
 understand, I really could n t afford to be rude to the 
 fellow. Business is business in these awful days. You 
 will overlook it this time, won t you ? " He looked 2 : 
 his watch with an air of abject humility; then a rars 
 glow of confidence came into his face. "Why, dear me, 
 I m only half an hour late, as it is. It seemed hcurs 
 to me." 
 
 "You re a nice boy to come on such short notice, 
 so I 11 forgive you," she said. "Mr. Blake s mother is 
 ill, and he telephoned at three that he could not leave 
 her. You don t mind being asked to fill in at the last 
 moment ?" 
 
 "Never, when it is to fill in at your house. From the 
 bottom of my heart, I hope you may always be so un 
 lucky as to have some one drop out at the very last 
 minute," he said gallantly. 
 
 "And afford you the chance to drop in at the very 
 last minute," she said, with an almost imperceptible 
 reproof in her voice. He was quick-witted; she was 
 sorry when he flushed. A wrinkle of pain came to the 
 corners of his eyes. 
 
 "I m awfully sorry," he reiterated. "Pray don t 
 delay any longer, dear Mrs. Trend. I m used to being 
 hustled in to dinner. Heaven knows why I should 
 
 
 
 If 
 
 f/*~ri
 
 
 always be late. Besides, you must let me defend myself 
 to this extent : I did n t get your message until after 
 six. I had been with Morgan s man all afternoon. 
 Luckily my evening clothes were at the club, or I should 
 have been later. I did n t leave my offices until nearly 
 half-past seven. It was the busiest afternoon I ve had 
 in six months. Sometimes I hate my office. It s like 
 a jail." 
 
 "Now, Sedgewick," she said, looking him calmly in 
 the eyes, "that s all rubbish. My secretary called up 
 your offices four times between three o clock and six. 
 Your stenographer said you were out. I am quite ready 
 to believe that you do hate your office." 
 
 For a moment he was speechless, but not fazed. His 
 mind was working like a trip-hammer. The affable, 
 apologetic smile crept into his face. 
 
 "I m more grieved than ever, now that I know it 
 was you who called," he said. "I gave the girl instruc 
 tions to say to every one who called up that I was out. 
 That man from Morgan s is an arbitrary chap. He 
 monopolises all 
 
 "Oh, how satisfactory you are !" she cried, with some 
 thing like real admiration in her voice. He was per 
 haps justified in congratulating himself upon his own 
 astuteness. It was not likely that she would ever hear 
 that he had played Bridge all the afternoon at Mrs. 
 Fielding s. He knew that Mrs. Trend and Mrs. Field 
 ing did not see anything of each other these days. Mrs. 
 Fielding somehow had dropped out of everything and
 
 no one cared to mention her name, unless forced to 
 do so. Something about a married man, "and all that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 Mr. Blynn, having delayed dinner quite three quar 
 ters of an hour, thereby sustaining his no uncertain 
 position in the limelight, was one of the first in the 
 dining-room after all. It was his way of doing penance, 
 so to speak. Besides, he was ever ready to assist other 
 guests in finding their places. With his dinner partner 
 on his arm, or tagging close behind, it was his custom to 
 make the circuit of the long table before coming to his 
 own chair; from time to time he courteously indicated 
 places to those who may have been perfectly capable of 
 finding them without aid, but who thought it very nice 
 of him just the same. 
 
 Blynn was a most obliging and thoughtful chap 
 and quite good to look at. A rare sense of modesty 
 saved him from the odium that fell upon the less wily 
 and more intrusive fellows of his own age and position 
 in society. He never obtruded himself or his talents, 
 but was ever ready to devote his entire time and energy 
 to the enterprises of his hostess or his guests. Other 
 young men in his set properly may have been accused of 
 boisterous though good-natured methods, but not so with 
 Sedgewick Blynn. He waited until he was asked to 
 supply the demand and then gave more than his share 
 with a frankness that was pleasingly free from conceit. 
 
 As a result, he was always called upon to do more 
 than his share, in more ways than one, and despite an
 
 [20] 
 
 apparent desire to give others the right of way, he was 
 never out of reach when wanted. Be it said to his 
 credit, so gentle was he in his triumphs that little or no 
 envy filled the souls of his fellow men. In fact, they 
 formed his cabinet. 
 
 Blynn was young, but not too young; handsome, but 
 not too handsome. He was twenty-six, a slender, tall, 
 fair-haired fellow with keen blue eyes and a patrician 
 nose. When he smiled he showed his white teeth in a 
 most amiable fashion; when he laughed aloud at some 
 other fellow s joke, he invariably brought joy to the 
 heart of the narrator by the fervent genuineness of his 
 mirth. One could always feel assured of Sedgewick 
 Blynn s appreciation, no matter how hoary the joke. 
 Graceful, easy, gallant, he was ever a joy to the box 
 party, the dinner, the dance and the debutante. Small 
 wonder, then, you would have said, if you could have 
 seen or met him, that he was so much in demand by the 
 smartest people in town. One likes to have a Beau 
 Brummel about, even though he eschews the arrogance 
 of the original and confesses, instead, to a lifelong state 
 of modesty and self-disparagement. 
 
 He played Bridge consistently and well and usu 
 ally won. In defence of this, he lugubriously confessed 
 to an unhappy poverty that sharpened his card-sense to 
 the point of infallibility. Moreover, he was agreeably 
 willing to play for a quarter of a cent or a dollar; he 
 was never peevish about it, which is more than can be 
 said for most gambling devotees of the game. Of course, 
 
 n 
 
 /* 
 
 j^i
 
 
 
 he had to lose occasionally. It may be worth while, in 
 depicting his character, to say that he lost only when 
 playing for a quarter of a cent or a half; obviously, he 
 felt it worth while to concentrate his card-sense on the 
 game only when it comprehended something beyond the 
 ludicrous. What is more, he was perfectly content to 
 play when there were no stakes at all. A most .agreeable 
 chap, you must admit. 
 
 He sang, coon songs or ballads, as occasion re 
 quired, and sang well, playing his own accompani 
 ments with vigour or tenderness as occasion required 
 so that all others might desert him if they chose a 
 circumstance which never happened. Even the oldest 
 grey-head hung about to join in the merry chorus when 
 he came to it. One could not help it. And, greater 
 than all this, he knew when to stop singing and playing. 
 He left them wanting more, not calling him a bore 
 which is a truth as well as a rhyme. 
 
 As a story teller he had few equals. In a tete-a-tete 
 he had no equals a very broad assertion, but, at 
 present, undisputed. Proud the unfledged but well-de 
 veloped bud who had him all to herself, and most gal 
 lant he in spite of all her first-bloom innocuousness. 
 He could make love to her so deliciously and so inoffen-j 
 sively that no mother could wish for more or less, for 
 that matter. Old ladies adored him, and the middle- 
 aged ones (God knows why there are so few of them 
 but, then, God is good !) cherished him as if he were a 
 thing that might have been forbidden.
 
 
 [22] 
 
 No woman was so old or so doddering that her con 
 versation failed to hold his most interested and undi 
 vided attention ; the older she got the more tenacious the 
 hold. It is not strange that they talked of him inces 
 santly, telling each other how much he was like those 
 dear gallants of the day when they were young all 
 of which became an asset in his fair stock of aspirations. 
 
 He gossiped delightfully and never promiscuously. He 
 knew all the scandal, but he was wise enough and strong 
 enough to whisper it into one ear at a time. Every 
 body said he was delightful, which was the only gossip 
 that he cared to have go farther. 
 
 He could borrow money of any man in his club, and 
 that is saying a great deal, for him and for the club. 
 One cannot withhold this supplemental word of praise 
 for the club. It is not, perhaps, quite true that he was 
 prompt or even prone to repay the loans thus established; 
 he was of the earth and not of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 At Mrs. Trend s dinner he sat between Miss Carnahan, 
 whom he had taken out, and Mrs. Rounseville, the coal 
 baron s wife. Mrs. Rounseville was always distressed 
 by the servant question. It was not that she could not 
 keep servants after she got them, but that they were 
 forever eating her out of house and home. In lamenting 
 this extraordinary condition of affairs, she was afforded 
 the pleasant sadness of announcing the number of 
 servants she kept and just what their duties were. 
 
 "We have fourteen in that wretched apartment of 
 ours, Miss Carnahan," she almost wailed across Mr. 
 
 p. 
 

 
 Copyright, 1910, Doik Mead & Co. 
 
 In a tete-a-tete he had no equals"
 
 
 31 
 
 Blynn s front. (There were seventeen rooms in the 
 apartment, besides the extra servants quarters near the 
 roof.) Miss Carnahan involuntarily tried to recall the 
 number of servants in her father s immense house on 
 the Boulevard. Colonel Carnahan was fabulously rich. 
 Bessie could not even remember how many footmen they 
 had. Sedgewick Blynn was properly impressed, al 
 though he had heard all about the Rounseville servants 
 half a dozen times at least. It seems that the good coal 
 baroness included the janitor, the man who shovelled 
 snow by the job, the window washer and one or two 
 other co-operative menials in her private menage. Mrs. 
 Rounseville was a snob. 
 
 "Fourteen? Dear me!" he said politely. 
 
 "Do you know, Mr. Blynn, my horror of thirteen 
 actually compels us to pay for an extra and absolutely 
 unnecessary maid ? Now, don t laugh at me ! I can t 
 help it. Mr. Rounseville says I am foolish, but well, 
 I just could n t bear the thought of having thirteen serv 
 ants. Twelve would not be sufficient, you see, and 
 fourteen is one too many. But I just could not bear 
 the thought of telling people that I had thirteen. Think 
 of it! Thirteen!" 
 
 "You could get around the hoodoo, Mrs. Rounseville, 
 by saying you keep between twelve and fourteen," rec 
 ommended he blandly. "Why say thirteen?" 
 
 "I never thought of that," she cried. Miss Carnahan 
 beamed upon him. No wonder people said that he was 
 bright! Mrs. Rounseville bored her excessively; she 
 
 
 3WS1^^ 
 
 cc5 si,/// tcb m<^
 
 [24] 
 
 could not help admiring the way in which Blynn sub 
 mitted to the long-winded and rather pathetic details 
 attending the hiring of a new cook who, it seems, 
 was to prove a treasure. "You must come in to-morrow 
 night for dinner, Mr. Blynn, and get the actual proof of 
 what I say." Mr. Blynn said it would give him great 
 pleasure to get out of a stupid engagement at the 
 club. He would come with joy and gladness. For 
 that matter, he d be delighted to come if she had no 
 cook at all ! 
 
 Mrs. Rounseville spent the rest of the evening telling 
 people how nice he was, even though she could n t quite 
 place his family. 
 
 i J 
 
 Before the evening was over, Sedgewick Blynn had 
 graciously booked four dinner engagements, a theatre 
 party, a Sunday night supper, three Bridges, and any 
 number of afternoon visits into serene dove-cotes 
 many of them as far ahead as a month. From which it 
 may be gathered that he was very much in demand 
 and very hard to attain on short notice. Inasmuch as 
 he was required to devote considerable time to his duties 
 as floor-manager of the next Charity Ball, as secretary of 
 the Orphans Home bazaar, as leader of the Assemblies 
 cotillions, as chairman of the Winter Club sports com 
 mittee, as stage-manager of the Amateur Dramatic Club 
 and to other social jobs, it is not surprising that he 
 had to think carefully before accepting intermediate in 
 vitations; or, for that matter, before arranging purely 
 business engagements. 
 
 m 

 
 
 ^3 
 
 w JO 
 
 4 v 
 
 1F7 
 
 [25] 
 
 He was a wise young owl in that he spent none of his 
 time in drinking bouts. His habits were exemplary. 
 
 After dinner, and while the players were seeking their 
 tables, he found his opportunity to carry Bessie Carna- 
 han off to a secluded corner for the brief though ex 
 pected "confidential" that, of late, they were so prone 
 to covet. 
 
 They sat in the shadow of the grand staircase, their 
 voices low, their heads quite close together. For five 
 minutes their conversation, too inane to repeat, savoured 
 of the vapid exchanges one has a right to expect from 
 just such exaltees. His cool, impelling blue eyes never 
 left her flushed face. Every time she glanced at his 
 face, his teeth were showing in his most eager smile. 
 She was nineteen, she was shy, and she was not yet past 
 the stage when a man s look serves to perturb. Miss 
 Carnahan, very pretty and very desirable, was just now 
 the apple of Blynn s eye. Her father had millions, with 
 a great city house, a home in the mountains and one in 
 rural England. Besides, she had three automobiles for 
 her very own. Blynn, of late, rode a great deal in one 
 or another of them. He never failed to contribute the 
 remark that her car was the best on the market; and 
 he could tell you all about the cylinders. 
 
 "Then you will tell Gately that you have a headache 
 and can t see him to-morrow afternoon?" he said, con 
 cluding a mild but insistent appeal which was in reality 
 an argument. 
 
 "Of course, if you like," she murmured, almost 
 
 Frl3>, $8 
 
 fa
 
 [26] 
 
 frightened by the thought of stealing such happiness. 
 It would be lying, after all, she reflected, and she was 
 still the younger sister of older liars. "He will be fu 
 rious." 
 
 "But you d rather have me around, would n t you ?" 
 he insisted. "I want to see you to-morrow. I ve got 
 something to tell you important." 
 
 "Can t you tell me now?" she cried and then 
 wondered if he would. 
 
 "I can t, because it all depends on to-night," he said 
 with the mysterious seriousness that makes all young 
 girls regret that their brains are too immature to grasp 
 the sage subtleness of the well-rounded man of the 
 world. 
 
 "Oh, please tell me," she pleaded. "You know I 11 
 not sleep a wink if you don t." 
 
 "That s just what I m after," he said softly. "I 
 want to be the cause of keeping you awake. I want 
 you to think of me all night long. I want " 
 
 "What a hag I d be in the morning," she cried with 
 a pretty grimace. 
 
 "Not in a million years," he protested in the language 
 dearest to a heart no older than hers. His fingers touched 
 hers as they lay on the arm of the big chair. Emboldened, 
 he clasped her little hand gently, insinuating his courage 
 into her quivering nerves. 
 
 She withdrew her hand quickly and a startled look 
 came into her young dark eyes. The gentle attack had 
 come too soon; the affair had not grown to such pro
 
 
 
 [2 7 ] 
 
 portions. Through her simple, untried brain danced the 
 confessions of other girls who had said that he squeezed 
 their fingers so deliciously when dancing. And, then, 
 like a flash, there came to her the memory of a story in 
 which a young and fashionable married woman was in 
 volved. She remembered sharply that there had been 
 gossip that he owed his advent into the smart world 
 to the influence of this clever matron, who had vouched 
 for him, paraded him, flirted flagrantly with him, and 
 then had dropped out of the respectable set as a comet 
 disappears into space. Somehow this tender girl, for the 
 first time in her life, instinctively felt the caution of her 
 sex creeping into existence; she was capable of reflec 
 tion. This was the moment which comes to every girl 
 the moment when she begins to analyse the motives of 
 the opposite sex for it is always opposite. 
 
 "Forgive me," he murmured abjectly. She imagined 
 that he turned very pale. Her heart fluttered, but some 
 thing cold raced down to her finger-tips. All she could 
 do was to smile, with a sharp, sob-like catch in her breath. 
 She was learning a new lesson in life. 
 
 At that moment some one came into the hall and in 
 exasperated tones called out to Blynn to hurry up: he 
 was delaying the game. 
 
 Blynn arose instantly. "I 11 see you to-morrow at 
 four ? " he said, his eyes bent closely upon hers. She 
 nodded and smiled. 
 
 "But won t it interfere with your business?" she 
 asked archly. Sedgewick Blynn gallantly waved his 

 
 m 
 
 hand in deprecation. He did not consider it worth 
 while to confess that she was his business. She was 
 an only child and the best investment in the city. 
 
 "Oh, by Jove," he said, abruptly stopping, an ex 
 pression of genuine dismay in his face. A subtle shadow 
 crept into his eyes. "I I almost forgot to telephone 
 to my mother." 
 
 "Your mother?" 
 
 "Yes, I usually call up about her bedtime, don t 
 you know. She likes to have me say good-night when 
 I can. Will you " with a pleading smile "excuse 
 me while I run into the telephone room and call her 
 up ? Tell em in there that I 11 not be a minute." 
 
 He entered the telephone room off the hall, and she 
 crossed to the card rooms. Pennington appeared in the 
 door. 
 
 "Where s Blynn ? We re waiting, Miss Carnahan." 
 
 "He has just gone in to telephone to his mother," she 
 said, her face flushed, her eyes bright. 
 
 "The dick beg pardon !" 
 
 "He usually telephones good-night to her," she said, 
 with an unconscious glow of pride. 
 
 Pennington s lean, grey face wore a puzzled look for an 
 instant. Then a warm flush suffused it. A new light came 
 into his eyes as he glanced toward the telephone room. 
 
 "I don t mind saying, Miss Carnahan, that my re 
 spect for your young blade has doubled yes, trebled 
 in the last minute. To say good-night to his mother 1 
 By Jove, his heart s all right ! " 
 
 8k 
 
 em 
 
 
 2}
 
 [29] 
 
 Inside the telephone room, in subdued tones, Sedge- 
 wick Blynn was saying: 
 
 "Hello, mother! That you ? I called the house three 
 times before half-past seven. Confound this telephone 
 service, anyway. I tried my best to get you. I m 
 awfully sorry to have disappointed you and the girls. 
 . . . The tickets ? I I ve got em in my pocket. 
 If I d had any sense I could have sent em out to you 
 by messenger. ... It s too bad, mother. You see, I 
 was n t able to shake that fellow from Morgan s until 
 ten minutes ago. It was terribly important, you know. 
 . . . Yes, I think it will be a good thing for me. . . . 
 Oh, that s too bad ! I m sorry you and the girls sat 
 around there with your things on, waiting for me. We 11 
 try it again next week. I 11 get seats for the same play. 
 . . . You kept your hats on till half-past nine ? By 
 George, it s a rotten shame ! I m going to complain 
 to-morrow to the manager of this beastly telephone 
 company. It s an outrage. What ? . . . Oh 1 Good 
 night 1" 
 
 M 
 
 *> 
 
 w ,
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 
 
 IN LOMBARD AVENUE 
 
 THE Blynn establishment in Lombard Avenue 
 was a very modest one. The house was an 
 old one but comfortable. Mrs. Blynn had 
 about three thousand a year; on this she and her daugh 
 ters could have lived comfortably, despite the taxes, had 
 it not been necessary to devote no little share of their 
 income to the business necessities of the head of the 
 family the son and brother, who was now operating 
 for himself. In him the sun rose and set: he was, so 
 to speak, the family sun. The widow, a dear old lady, 
 with the foresight and strength to oppose his one-time 
 plan to mortgage the house so that he could obtain a 
 controlling interest in a new and wonderful copper 
 mine that bade fair to turn into the proverbial "gold 
 mine" in the end, believed in him as she had believed 
 in her husband when their days were young and their 
 struggles tense. She expected to see this son of hers high 
 in the financial world before her long day s work was 
 done. 
 
 It is quite possible that her daughters now and again 
 had felt some little misgiving concerning Sedgewick and
 
 
 secretly expressed their vague doubts, but, if such were 
 the case, up to this time they had kept their fears to 
 themselves. Sisters, as a rule, do not see a man through 
 eyes so kindly and so obscured as those which lie in a 
 mother s head. They were not so sure of Sedgewick ! 
 Anna was forty-three and Hettie thirty-nine. They were 
 vastly older, it may be seen, than the idol of the home in 
 Lombard Avenue; they were born in the days of their 
 father s hardest fight for success, not when he was ready 
 to say that he was safe against the possibility of abso 
 lute failure. Sedgewick was the son of his easy, opti 
 mistic days. It is not unnatural, then, that they should 
 have a different outlook upon the world. They loved 
 Sedgewick idolised him, in fact but they well, 
 they often wondered. 
 
 There were two servants in the house, old and faith 
 ful servitors: the cook who was strong enough and 
 willing enough to take care of the furnace, and the house 
 maid, who did the washing and ironing on Mondays 
 and Tuesdays and made no complaint about serving 
 breakfast to Sedgewick, no matter how late the hour, in 
 bed or out of it. On wash days and ironing days, the 
 Blynn sisters put aside their church sewing and reading 
 and did the up-stairs work of the housemaid. 
 
 That the women of the family were proud of and 
 glorified by Sedgewick s social elevation was no matter 
 for speculation. They made no doubt that he was de 
 serving of the position he had achieved in the almost 
 impregnable smart set; they were content to skimp and 
 
 40^5 
 
 3 
 
 
 sp^e*_ 
 
 
 & 
 
 3H 

 
 4 
 
 vs 
 
 
 [32] 
 
 sacrifice in order that he might hold his own for the 
 glory of the family. They could imagine no greater 
 recompense than the happiness which should be theirs 
 when he at last led to the altar one of those fair young 
 creatures of purple and fine linen, thereby ensconcing 
 himself serenely for all time among the things that are 
 gilded. 
 
 The two sisters, at times, may have dwelt luxuri 
 ously in dreams of marriage for themselves, but time 
 and Sedgewick had made these dreams a waste of 
 deserted hopes. There was, alas, nothing left for them 
 but church work and devotion to the unclad heathen. 
 Which seems all the more a pity when one realises that 
 they were not uncomely, nor were they soured by pro 
 tracted virginity. 
 
 The family saw but little of Sedgewick in these tri 
 umphal days. He was so seldom at home for dinner 
 that a plate was never laid for him; he had his break 
 fasts there, and it was then that these eager worshippers 
 listened to his tales of the gilded sea through which he 
 floated. It goes without saying that they were properly 
 impressed, despite his manly declaration that he was 
 tired of it all and longed for quiet evenings at home. 
 When, on occasion, he was at home for an evening, the 
 celebration was somewhat tempered by the distressing 
 fear that he had been slighted in not receiving an invi 
 tation to spend the time elsewhere. 
 
 Once how well remembered ! he deliberately de 
 clined at least half a dozen invitations for dinner and the 
 
 V2JM
 
 [33] 
 
 theatre, steadfastly assuring his mother and sisters that 
 he was determined to spend the evening with them. 
 They wculd play a few rubbers at Bridge and let society 
 go hang ! It was on this eventful occasion that his 
 mother volunteered to guarantee the payment of certain 
 office and club expenses amounting to something like 
 two thousand dollars. It required an hour of earnest 
 insistence on the part of all of them before he would 
 consent to accept the advancement ! He merely had 
 mentioned the indebtedness in explanation of a steady 
 headache which had been bothering him of late. Not 
 for the world .... 
 
 On the evening of Mrs. Trend s dinner party, Mrs. 
 Blynn and her daughters, considerably excited by the 
 prospect of a treat at the theatre, dressed early and in 
 their best. They waited dinner for Sedgewick until 
 after seven, and then, somewhat dismayed, sat down to 
 it without him. 
 
 "It s the abominable street car service," explained 
 Miss Anna, with more irritation in her voice than was 
 usual. "The cars never run when you want them to." 
 
 "We ll be late and I always like to be there when the 
 curtain goes up," lamented Miss Hettie. "Why could n t 
 he have started home earlier ? He is n t with us so often 
 that he might not afford to break away from his office 
 early once in a while." 
 
 "Now, Hettie, don t find fault with Sedgewick," 
 interposed the mother quietly. "He s been delayed on 
 the way out. as Anna says. Poor boy, I fancy he s
 
 [34] 
 
 . 
 
 stamping his feet in despair in some blocked street car 
 along the line." 
 
 "He said he d be here by six," mumbled the rebellious 
 Miss Hettie. Being the younger of the two sisters, she 
 naturally observed less restraint in commenting upon 
 the shortcomings of the next in order of birth. "You 
 know, Anna, he could step into a drugstore and telephone) 
 to us if the blockade is a serious one." 
 
 "He ll be here in a few minutes, never fear," said 
 Mrs. Blynn staunchly. "Katie, will you tell Bridget to 
 keep something warm for Mr. Sedgewick r He ll be in 
 a great hurry when he comes in. Anna, perhaps you d 
 better get out his evening clothes and 
 
 "Mother, he dresses at the club every night of his 
 life," interrupted Miss Hettie. "His clothes are there, 
 you forget." 
 
 "So they are, so they are. Poor boy, how busy they 
 must keep one in society." 
 
 Miss Hettie s black eyes sent a sharp, inquiring glance 
 at Miss Anna s serene, sweet face, and detected there a 
 momentary shade of annoyance. Miss Anna s hair was 
 grey at the temples, and dark, luminous eyes peered 
 through glasses that were not youthful. The younger 
 sister was dark and sharp featured, without a grey thread 
 in her hair. Both were still good-looking women, fading] 
 slowly because their lives had been gently spent. 
 
 " His shirts and collars are are delivered at the 
 club by the laundry," added Mrs. Blynn reflectively. 
 "Dear me, how little we do see of him."
 
 [35] 
 
 "We don t see even his shirts and collars," remarked 
 Miss Hettie, with a dry smile. 
 
 "We darn his socks," protested Miss Anna loyally, 
 affecting a gay little laugh. 
 
 "And sew on his buttons," added her sister. 
 
 "My dears, it does n t take much of our time, and we 
 ought to be happy in doing it." 
 
 "We are happy," cried both sisters promptly. 
 
 Nothing more was said until the coffee was served, 
 each apparently giving herself over to her own thoughts 
 and impressions. A line between Miss Anna s gentle 
 eyes deepened perceptibly, while the flush in Miss 
 Hettie s cheeks grew darker as if stirred from beneath by 
 
 some suppressed force. 
 1 
 
 "It s nearly eight," she mentioned. 
 
 "I I shall go up-stairs and put on my hat," said 
 their mother, rising slowly. "We must not keep him 
 waiting." 
 
 The sisters looked at each other in silence as she moved 
 
 toward the door. 
 
 , 
 
 "If he only had sent the tickets out to us, we might 
 have joined him at the theatre," Miss Hettie could not 
 resist saying. 
 
 "Mother, you must not forget to bring down your 
 heavy muffler," cautioned Miss Anna. "Remember 
 you have a bad cold starting in. Really, I d be rather 
 pleased if we were not to go out to-night, after all. Your 
 fold distresses me." 
 
 "It s nothing. And I would n t disappoint Sedgewick
 
 <* .,.,., >k l ft dg-Na-^AJg j. tH 
 
 [36] 
 
 for the world. He has counted on this evening for a 
 week or more." 
 
 "I ll be up-stairs in a minute to help you with your 
 veil, mother," said Miss Hettie 
 
 "Don t be late, dears. Don t keep him waiting." 
 
 They could not see the tears of pain that came into* 
 her eyes as she slowly mounted the stairs. She had just" 
 come to realize that he had forgotten her ! 
 
 The sisters sat for many minutes, stirring their coffee 
 without so much as a glance at each other. Neither 
 seemed to be willing to be the first to utter the convic 
 tions that had grown firm in their minds. 
 
 "He s forgotten it, Hettie," said Anna at last, without 
 
 i i 
 looking up. 
 
 "I don t mind so much for myself," said the other 
 wearily. "It s mother." 
 
 "It isn t possible that he could have met with an 
 accident ? " volunteered the elder, almost hopefully. 
 
 "It s more than possible that he has accidentally met 
 some one who has asked him to do something else." 
 
 "Mother has been so delighted over the prospect o( 
 seeing Miss Barrymore," said Miss Anna. After a 
 moment s indecision she blazed forth, a wide rift in her 
 usual placidity: "He he ought to be ashamed of 
 himself! After all she does for him, too! To forget 
 her! Hettie, it s cruel it s heartless! I don t care 
 about seeing the play I can get on without it. Heaven 
 knows we re not in the habit of going to the theatre, so 
 ;t does n t hurt so much in that way. But we could have 
 
 ~ 
 
 \jA/ <t
 
 
 [37] 
 
 had a jolly evening, the four of us, and mother had 
 counted on it so much the play and the little supper 
 afterward. Hettie, do you know that she drew some 
 money from the bank yesterday so that Sedge need n t 
 be embarrassed about ordering a good supper he s 
 always short, you know. I I love Sedgewick, but 
 but why can t he be a little different toward mother ? He 
 thinks of nothing but his society friends society, 
 society, society!" 
 
 "The cemetery of unselfishness," said Miss Hettie, 
 who was epigrammatic. "It s a whirlpool and he s 
 been dragged into it he s lost to us, Anna. He s even 
 lost to mother. He never thinks of us he never thinks 
 of her. There are days and days when we don t see him 
 nor even hear from him on the phone. He has time to 
 go to the houses of a hundred other people, but not time 
 to come to his own. I don t like to say it, Anna, but 
 he never gives us a spare hour of his time unless he s 
 hard up and wants to wheedle something out of mother. 
 If he s got such a wonderful business, why doesn t he 
 give something to her instead of taking it away from 
 her?" 
 
 "Hettie ! You know we are all glad to help him along 
 in his business. He s just starting out and 
 
 "I know it s mean of me to say it, but I can t help it. 
 I m mad and I m going to say what I feel. It is n t 
 business that keeps him away from mother twenty-nine 
 nights in the month and it is n t business that runs up his 
 club, livery, and restaurant bills until he can t pay them. 
 
 V 
 
 s^- i. 
 
 M 
 
 *^^ 
 
 4
 
 li 
 
 fe 
 
 [38] 
 
 Anna, don t you know that we have n t had a decent new 
 dress, either of us, in two years ? How many suits of 
 clothes silk underwear, shirts, high hats, overcoats, 
 and all that, has he had in well, in the last six months ? 
 And from whom does he borrow the money to pay for 
 them ? Thank heaven, we don t need a new dress every 
 six months, but I d like to feel that I could ask for it 
 without robbing mother. It may be true that we are 
 are pensioners, in plain words " 
 
 "Oh, don t say that, Hettie!" 
 
 "Pensioners, that s just it. We are women and we 
 did n t marry. We are drags. We may toil and we 
 may spin after a fashion, but we have failed to do the 
 thing which was expected of us. We still subsist from 
 mother s hand. She does not resent it, but I ll bet any 
 thing that Sedgewick feels that we are an everlasting 
 drain on poor mother s little store. He can t see why 
 we ve never married. He can t see why father provided 
 for us as well as for him. We should have had husbands 
 to make livings for us. That s our crime against the law 
 and order of things. He feels, and I know it, that we are 
 dreadful burdens to mother, in spite of the fact that we 
 cheerfully give to him from our own share of what father 
 left to all of us in common." 
 
 "He can t think that of us," groaned Miss Anna. 
 
 "Certainly he can. W 7 hy not ? We re old maids - 
 and, heaven be praised, we re healthy. We ll live a 
 long time. Maybe he thinks we ll expect him to take 
 care of us in our old age." 
 
 
 
 fv-f/^i i^<7 rn 
 
 d^m 2 

 
 
 10* 
 
 p") 
 
 *? CD 
 
 [391 
 
 "You should n t say such things, Hettie." 
 
 " Perhaps I should n t, dear," said Miss Hettie, after 
 a moment of reflection. "He is a dear boy and I love 
 him. We ought to be proud of him of his position 
 of his prospects. Yes, he will succeed; I am a mean cat 
 to say the things I have said. I m sorry." There was 
 another long silence between the distressed sisters. Then 
 Miss Hettie spoke up decisively. "But he won t come 
 to-night. He has forgotten us. And mother is up-stairs 
 putting on her things to go out. It s ten minutes past 
 eight. Have you an idea that he will come ? No!" 
 
 "He could have telephoned," murmured Miss Anna in 
 despair. "He might have done that." 
 
 "He would have done it if if he had not forgotten it 
 altogether." 
 
 "He telephoned out to her yesterday. I heard her 
 talking to him. Afterwards she told me that he had an 
 opportunity to sell four of those Consolidated Gas bonds 
 at a fine profit. She s talking of getting them out of the 
 vault next week." 
 
 "I wonder if it s best to sell any of those bonds," 
 mused Miss Hettie, who had a fair sense of business. 
 
 "She s going to talk it over with Mr. Foote at the 
 bank. Do you know, Hettie, I half suspect she does n t 
 really trust to Sedge s judgment." 
 
 "He sold the Pullman stock, you remember," said 
 Miss Hettie meaningly. 
 
 "Well, he explained that," protested Miss Anna, from 
 which it may be gathered that the transfer was ill- 

 
 1 
 
 ti&J 
 
 [40] 
 
 advised. "It might have gone lower in the slump or 
 
 whatever you call it." 
 
 * 
 
 "But it was costing us nothing to hold it, Mr. Foote 
 said." 
 
 "Girls!" called their mother from the head of the 
 stairs. The sisters started guiltily 
 
 "Yes, mother," called out Miss Hettie. "Coming." 
 
 "Get your things on. He ll be in a great hurry. We ll 
 miss some of the play, as it is." 
 
 They looked at each other pityingly as they arose and 
 started to obey the summons. 
 
 "Poor mother," murmured Miss Anna. 
 
 "Her cold is worse," said her sister. , "She s been 
 coughing a great deal and she has those pains in her 
 back and chest. I m I m rather glad we re not going 
 
 6 66 
 
 out, Anna." 
 
 "So am I," said Miss Anna bravely. "But we ll have 
 to put on our hats." 
 
 "Where are the opera glasses, Hettie," asked Mrs. 
 Blynn, as they started up the stairs. 
 
 "Sedgewick has them, mother," answered her daugh 
 ter. "Or, at least, he left them at Mrs. DeMille s some 
 time ago. He said he was to get them the next time he 
 went there." 
 
 "That was six months ago," murmured Miss Anna, 
 quite inaudibly. Her sister put her finger to her lips and 
 shook her head. 
 
 "Well, hurry down, girls. We must not keep him 
 
 . 
 waiting. I ve been watching the street cars go by on 
 
 
 
 _ . 
 
 tt 
 
 :
 
 
 [41] 
 
 the Craven street line. They seem to be running all 
 right now." 
 
 "Yes, mother." 
 
 In sober, almost unbroken silence the three of them 
 came down and sat in the warm little parlor, consciously 
 
 intent upon every sound that came from the outside. 
 
 r J 
 
 They listened eagerly for the quick footsteps of the 
 youth for whom they waited; they longed for the dash 
 up the chill front steps and the bursting in upon them 
 of the belated loved one, with his instant and vigorous 
 explanation of the wretched delay. With their hats and 
 veils and gloves on and their wraps close at hand they 
 waited in plaintive patience, each certain that he would 
 not come but neither daring to voice the conviction. 
 
 The grim old clock in the hall banged the hour of nine. 
 Unconsciously they found themselves hoping that it 
 would stop on the stroke of eight. Oh, if it had only 
 stopped then ! But it clanged on and, somehow, it 
 seemed that it meant to strike ten in its cruel irony and 
 then relented before it was too late to recall the stroke. 
 A deep sigh fell from the lips of Mrs. Blynn. She glanced 
 at each of her daughters with a wan, pathetic smile. 
 
 Katie, the housemaid, came to the door and in rather 
 subdued tones inquired if Bridget should keep dinner 
 warm for Mr. Sedgewick. 
 
 "I suppose he s had his dinner," said Miss Hettie 
 
 u T 
 
 sharply. 
 
 " Perhaps not, if he has been delayed on the car line," 
 interposed the mother, still hoping. "Tell her to keep
 
 m 
 
 [42 j 
 
 the steak near the fire, Katie, and be ready to make him 
 some hot coffee." 
 
 "Very well, ma am." 
 
 Mrs. Blynn moved her chair to a spot where she could 
 look upon the sidewalk. Miss Hettie had raised the 
 shade some time before. From time to time one or an 
 other of them spoke of the act they had missed or re 
 peated some oft-given remark about Sedgewick s non- 
 appearance. Neither of them had a word of criticism to 
 offer; they steadfastly clung to the certainty that he had 
 been unavoidably detained a discrepancy in Provi 
 dence, not Sedgewick Blynn. 
 
 "The sidewalks are very icy," said Mrs. Blynn, fol 
 lowing one of her quick glances down the street. 
 
 "It s very cold," said Miss Anna. After a moment s 
 reflection she added: "How I hate to go out on a night 
 like this." 
 
 Miss Hettie looked up quickly. "The street cars are 
 always so crowded, and goodness knows how many 
 germs one might get. There s pneumonia, grippe, 
 scarlet fever, and 
 
 "As if we d catch scarlet fever at our age," cried Miss 
 Anna, with a well-delivered laugh. 
 
 "My dear, it s very serious if one does get it at our 
 age," said Miss Hettie. "Is n t it, mother?" 
 
 "It s very serious with children, no matter when they 
 get it," said Mrs. Blynn, trying to fall in with the spirit 
 of the others. "I do hope Sedgewick has n t slipped on 
 the icy pavement and hurt himself in a fall."
 
 
 CE? **=*=St*& ! x=s3*/s* -JkSU^ 
 
 Ol [43] 
 
 "He never slips," said Miss Hettie quietly. 
 
 "Doesn t he always say that he ll land on his feet, 
 mother?" added Miss Anna airily. 
 
 "An accident is an accident, however," said their 
 mother, going to the window for a long, intense look 
 into the gas-lit street. Miss Hettie seized the opportunity 
 to shake her fist at a framed photograph of a bright-faced 
 young man, that stood on the centre table beneath the 
 lamp. 
 
 At half-past nine, Mrs. Blynn slowly began to remove 
 the pins from her bonnet, still facing the window with 
 her back to the girls. Her voice trembled ever so slightly 
 as she said: 
 
 "I don t believe he is coming, girls. We might as well 
 take off our hats and go to bed. I am I am so 
 very sorry, girls, that you could not have gone to-night. 
 You must be terribly disappointed. It is " 
 
 "Tush, mother," cried Miss Hettie quickly. 
 
 "I really did not care to go out, my dears. My cold 
 is bothering me and, really, you know, bed is the place 
 for me with a hot-water bottle. But with you it s 
 different. You would have loved Miss Barrymore. I 
 -I don t see why Hettie, perhaps you d better see 
 if the telephone is out of order. He may have called up 
 and could not get us." 
 
 Deliberately, without comment, the three disappointed 
 women removed their hats and gloves. Miss Anna forced 
 a smile of gratification into her face as she gaily tossed 
 her hat upon the table. 
 
 
 

 
 [44] 
 
 "Thank heaven, mother, you re not disappointed; 
 you may be sure I m not. I ve actually been lament 
 ing the fact that I had to go out. Since you don t mind 
 missing the play, I 11 confess that I was well, what 
 Sedgewick calls grouchy about leaving a warm fireside 
 to-night. I would n t have let you know it for the world, 
 though. I m so interested in this book of Hardy s. You 
 must read it, mother. Goodness, it makes me furious 
 to think of the two hours I ve missed this evening. A 
 book beats a play all to pieces." 
 
 "Give me Anthony Hope every time," commented Miss 
 Hettie, jerking off her glove. "Mother, shall I take your 
 things up-stairs ? " 
 
 "Yes, dear. I I think I ll read awhile myself." 
 They observed the deepening lines at the corners of her 
 mouth; her nether lip quivered for a second before she 
 could reclaim control of it. There was a dull, lifeless 
 look in her faded, sweet old face. 
 
 The truth had come home to her. 
 
 Miss Hettie scowled fiercely as she hurried up the 
 stairway. Tears rushed to her eyes and her heart was 
 full. 
 
 "Don t forget to try the telephone, Hettie," was Mrs. 
 Blynn s quavering injunction. 
 
 "All right, mother," came back in subdued tones. 
 
 Mrs. Blynn wearily picked up her book from the 
 table and sank into the chair that was always hers. As 
 she adjusted her reading glasses, Miss Anna came over 
 and put an arm about her frail shoulders. 
 
 "&l
 
 [45] 
 
 "I m glad you did n t mind, mother," she said, with 
 the tact of a loving deceiver. "We did n t, I m sure." 
 
 "I thought you d be bitterly disappointed," murmured 
 the mother gratefully, but she saw through Miss Anna s 
 strategy with eyes that would not be blinded again. 
 
 Miss Hettie found them reading quietly by the table 
 when she came jauntily down-stairs, her own book in her 
 hand. If Mrs. Blynn had looked sharply enough she 
 might have seen a queer light in Miss Hettie s eyes. 
 Miss Hettie was about to tell a lie a white lie, of 
 course and it was something she was not in the habit 
 of doing. 
 
 "The telephone must be out of order, mother," she 
 said, involuntarily blushing as Miss Anna looked up. 
 "I can t get Central." 
 
 "Ah, that s it !" cried her mother, her face lighting up 
 instantly. "He could not reach us." 
 
 The words were hardly out of her mouth when the 
 telephone bell rang testily, aye, ironically. Miss Hettie 
 gasped and lost her wits completely. 
 
 Miss Anna stepped into the breach. "Go and answer 
 it, Hettie. The repairs must have just been completed. 
 Dear me, how those men must suffer who work on the 
 lines such weather as this." 
 
 "I will answer it, Hettie," said Mrs. Blynn. "It s 
 Sedgewick and he s been trying to get us all evening." 
 She went up-stairs more quickly than they had seen her 
 move in many months. Breathlessly they listened to her 
 voice as she responded to the speaker at the other end.
 
 SLJW2. 
 
 [46] 
 
 When she hung up the receiver and started down-stairs, 
 Miss Hettie whispered her first words of secession : 
 
 "I ll bet he s lied to her like a trooper!" Her eyes 
 blazed. 
 
 "Be careful, Hettie!" 
 
 Mrs. Blynn went to the speaking tube that led to the 
 kitchen before addressing herself to the silent daughters 
 
 "Bridget, don t keep Mr. Sedgewick s dinner any 
 longer. He he has been detained." Then to the 
 girls: "It is as I thought. He has tried to get me five 
 or six times." 
 
 A quick, wondering glance sped between Miss Hettie 
 and Miss Anna. It said plainly that they knew she did 
 not believe what he had told her. They did not ask 
 where he was. 
 
 WJ
 
 
 G 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIP 
 
 EORGE PENNINGTON was a temperamental 
 person one might say an impressionable one 
 and not be stretching the point. He was forty- 
 five if he was a day, and yet he found himself nourishing 
 a sudden, unusual liking for the gay fledgeling, Sedge- 
 wick Blynn, twenty years his junior. He made no doubt 
 that his new-found impressions were due to the fact that 
 the young man had said good-night to his mother and 
 was, according to report, in the habit of doing so, no 
 matter how he was situated. It was his innermost belief 
 that the man who could pay such sweet gentle homage 
 to the little mother at home could not be, by any manner 
 of means, as selfish and unworthy as the general run of 
 society men as he had come to know them. 
 
 He waited two or three days, hearing in the meantime 
 more than one slighting remark concerning the vainglori 
 ous pet of society, and then casually asked Blynn to 
 lunch with him at the club. They met in the reading 
 room; Pennington s invitation was well-meant and 
 spontaneous. He really wanted to like the young man; 
 he believed he was worth while and not in a fair way to 
 be spoiled, as most men prophesied. 
 
 ^T 

 
 
 [48] 
 
 Sedgewick s wry, apologetic smile was an appeal to 
 the unexpected friendliness of the older man. Penning- 
 ton s heart grew warmer; in his mind he said that there 
 was something more than lovable in the young man s 
 manner. Blynn s smile was almost his fortune. 
 
 "I d like to, Mr. Pennington, but I ve I ve half 
 way promised to lunch with Mr. Ransome. He wants 
 to talk something over with me." Sedgewick was look 
 ing grievously disappointed. "I say, would you mind 
 waiting a moment?" he went on earnestly. "I ll tele 
 phone to Mr. Ransome and tell him I ll drop in at his 
 office this afternoon. I d like very much to lunch with 
 you, thank you, if I can arrange it." He hurried off 
 to the telephone booth and called for Mr. Ransome s 
 offices. 
 
 Ransome was one of the great financial leaders of the 
 country. His acquaintance with this young sprig of 
 fashion was of the most casual nature. The great man 
 was too busy to go in for society; it was not likely that 
 he should come in contact with its most popular expo 
 nent except on occasions when he was obliged to listen 
 to the pleas of committee men who undertook to provide 
 him with boxes for the charity entertainments at five 
 hundred dollars per box, to say nothing of the horse and 
 motor shows, where he might have been seen quite regu 
 larly. It would seem that he preferred the society of 
 horses and motors to that of his fellow creatures as 
 represented by the set to which he belonged by virtue 
 of his wife s religious views which had nothing what-
 
 [49] 
 
 . 
 
 soever to do with God, but were rather arbitrary in respect 
 to a certain creed. 
 
 Over the telephone Mr. Blynn graciously informed 
 Mr. Ransome s secretary that he would personally de 
 liver to the kind gentleman the tickets and reservations 
 for the great charity concert on the 27th, and would do 
 so during the afternoon. He had expected to hand them 
 to Mr. Ransome during luncheon at the club, but as he 
 was lunching himself with some one else he was afraid 
 he might miss him in the rush. In response to which 
 the secretary, perhaps not recognising this as an ex 
 planation for Mr. Blynn s inability to lunch with Mr. 
 Ransome, merely replied, "Very well," and hung up 
 the receiver. 
 
 But, of course, Mr. Pennington could not have known 
 of the difficulties attending Mr. Blynn s sacrifice on his 
 account. He was only relieved when Blynn returned 
 with a smile on his frank countenance, to announce that 
 he had put the old gentleman off and would be free to 
 lunch with him. 
 
 "Are you on the inside with Ransome ?" asked Pen 
 nington as they waited for the cocktails. "You re a 
 lucky dog if you are." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Sedgewick, with becoming candour; 
 
 "my affairs are too insignificant to interest him. I m 
 
 . 
 merely a small satellite. I hang on when he is n t look- 
 
 J 
 
 ing. He had agreed to take something off my hands, 
 that s all, just a trifle, you know." It was not neces 
 sary to tell Pennington that he was chairman of the box
 
 
 
 < 
 
 [50] 
 
 sale for the charity concert. He was justified in taking 
 it for granted that Pennington had seen that fact dis 
 played in the society columns of the newspapers. 
 
 That luncheon was the beginning of an intimacy 
 between the two that amazed and even annoyed the 
 friends of the older man.. Not that they could put a 
 finger on any specific reason why it should not exist; 
 they could say nothing when he met their protests with 
 the comfortable assurance that he liked Blynn and that 
 there was a great deal more to him than one might sus 
 pect, if judging merely by surface appearances. Blynn 
 had a way of making every one like him, even though 
 there may have been some reason for not admiring him. 
 
 He interested and amused Pennington, who was easy 
 going to the point of carelessness in more ways than one. 
 
 Pennington was rich, unselfish, charitable toward the 
 foibles of others and generous with his own. It was 
 like him, as Stanley had said, to take up with a chap 
 like Blynn just for the sake of doing something unusual 
 in a man of forty-five. But strange as it may seem to 
 them, Pennington found real delight in going about 
 with the omnipresent young blade, quite to the exclusion 
 of his older and better friends. 
 
 Others may not have grasped the reason for all this; 
 but Pennington remembered that Blynn was in the 
 habit of saying good-night to his mother. Once, in 
 conversation, he mentioned it to the young man; there 
 after Sedgewick made splendid capital of his reputation 
 for filial piety. It is only fair to add that he actually
 
 [51] 
 
 made it a practice to telephone to his mother, thereby 
 setting a fashion among an aping set of young gallants 
 that created no end of wonder and delight for the mothers 
 who found themselves unexpectedly and rather con 
 spicuously remembered. 
 
 It is of record that during one of Mrs. Loveless s week 
 end house-parties up the bay, the telephone tolls amassed 
 by devoted sons amounted to something over two hundred 
 dollars. Everybody said that the world was getting 
 better, and Mrs. Loveless was perfectly content to pay 
 the bill, without noticing how many mothers each of 
 her young men possessed, nor how varied were their 
 abiding places. 
 
 Sedgewick Blynn, however, was not a worshipper at 
 the chorus girl shrine. 
 
 The first few months of the friendship between George 
 Pennington, clubman and capitalist, and Sedgewick 
 Blynn, broker and sunshine dealer, have little to do with 
 the net results of this tale, except as they had their bear 
 ing upon the natural development of certain ideals. So 
 cially they scarcely kept abreast of each other; Blynn 
 went everywhere and travelled the path with energy; 
 while Pennington, caring less for the froth of life as he 
 saw more of it, accepted only such invitations as seemed 
 to promise real diversion. He sat back and watched the 
 progress of his young friend in the conquest of hearts 
 and smiled in true enjoyment of the other s campaigns. 
 Sedgewick was never wholly out of the maelstrom. If 
 Pennington thought at all of the young man s unique
 
 [52] 
 
 regard for the purely business side of his life, he did not 
 permit it to weigh against him in his estimation. He 
 could not but have recognised the puerile methods 
 which characterised Blynn s operations. 
 
 Nor did it weigh against the young man when, from 
 time to time as their friendship grew, he haltingly re 
 quested the loan of small sums to lift him over sharp 
 
 ^\/f^ 
 
 and unexpected chasms. Pennington cheerfully lent 
 
 him the money; he had been young once himself and 
 had lived beyond his means, with no one to borrow from. 
 And Blynn, notwithstanding his tardiness in returning 
 money borrowed from other and younger companions, 
 was most punctilious in repaying Pennington. All of 
 which held him in great good favour with that excellent 
 friend. 
 
 The winter and spring ran into summer and society 
 began to look for its pleasures in the country, at the 
 seashore, in the mountains, and about the northern lakes. 
 Sedgewick was asked everywhere. He was in need of 
 wings or seven-league boots; only the magic tapestry 
 of Scheherazade could have transported him to all of 
 the hostesses who wanted him to come to them. He 
 golfed and motored and sailed over a territory that might 
 well have confounded him had it not been for George 
 Pennington s generosity. 
 
 Pennington, the idler, enjoyed his summers; he hated 
 the winters. Blynn was not pecuniarily able to take 
 advantage of all that was offered, a condition that Pen 
 nington was not slow to appreciate; it was like him,
 
 
 <?^ 
 
 w 
 
 m 
 
 [53] 
 
 therefore, to promote his own enjoyment by playing the 
 fairy prince to the humble knight. He cheerfully insisted 
 on paying all, or nearly all, of the young man s expenses 
 when they ventured out of town together which was 
 quite often, as they dallied with the same element of the 
 smart set. 
 
 It was no unusual thing for Sedgewick to stay for days 
 at a time in Pennington s luxurious apartment, one 
 door removed from the exclusive club of which they were 
 members. He dressed there, and shaved there, and 
 bathed there. 
 
 But, once in a while, he went home for a night or two 
 in succession. 
 
 "I hate this thing of running away from my mother, 
 George," he once said as they were travelling north to 
 join a big house party in the hills. There was a serious, 
 restless expression in his face. "She s old and she s 
 well, she s a bit frail, old man. By gad, I m going to 
 cut it out pretty soon that is, a good deal of it. I 
 don t see her a tenth as much as I d like to. She wants 
 me to enjoy every bit of it, you understand. She s the 
 best mother in the world. I d give my life, my soul for 
 her. And, I say, George, she s just crazy about you. 
 I ve told her what a bully chap you are and she s Oh, 
 well, she s like any mother, I suppose." 
 
 Pennington s eyes gleamed with genuine pleasure. 
 Somehow he had come to love this old lady whom he 
 had never seen, to his best recollection. She was like a 
 drtam to him a sweet, restful dream. 
 
 \v 
 
 UM
 
 [54] 
 
 "I should like very much to know her," he said warmly. 
 "Of course, I knew your sisters er some years ago, 
 but I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother." 
 
 "I d like to have you go out with me and stay over 
 night, George. Mother d be tickled to death. Your 
 name is a household word, let me tell you." 
 
 It is worthy of mention that Pennington, bearing all 
 this in mind, out of the pure joyousness of his heart, 
 sent a huge bunch of roses to Mrs. Blynn immediately 
 upon his return to town, inclosing his card. 
 
 "I ll let the dear old lady see that I appreciate being 
 a household word, if nothing else," he said to himself. 
 He had no response from the recipient of this floral 
 attention. Vaguely puzzled, he waited for a fortnight, 
 and then, possessed of a whimsical impulse, motored 
 out to the home in Lombard Avenue. He said nothing 
 to Sedgewick of his intention for the very excellent reason 
 that his young friend was off for a three days stay with 
 the Carnahans. 
 
 He was admitted by Katie, who went to the door in her 
 scrub-clothes, taking it for granted that it was the post 
 man s ring. Mrs. Blynn came down-stairs with a look 
 of polite askance in response to his card. 
 
 When he left the house a quarter of an hour later, his 
 own self-esteem and no little portion of his confidence 
 in Sedgewick Blynn were severely stricken. He had dis-. 
 covered almost instantly that his name, far from being- 
 a household word, was quite unknown to Mrs. Blynn. 
 She was pleasantly surprised to receive a friend of Sedge-.
 
 .-**. 
 
 [55] 
 
 wick s, and, after a moment s reflection, volunteered her 
 thanks for the roses, admitting that she was sorely puzzled 
 at the time of their arrival and thought there must have 
 been some mistake. Still, there were so few Blynns. He 
 went away half-dazed, and more distressed than he could 
 have imagined. 
 
 It had been revealed to him beyond question that 
 Sedgewick had at least exaggerated the attitude of his 
 family toward him; he had never been so uncomfortable 
 in his life; she had graciously asked him to call again 
 when Sedgewick was at home, and perhaps he would 
 better telephone out in advance, as her son was so busy 
 in his office that he seldom came to his home. Besides, 
 she added with a tender smile, he was something of a 
 society man, and went about a great deal in the evening, 
 as doubtless Mr. Pennington would see if he read the 
 paper. 
 
 In no little distress of mind, he took Sedgewick to 
 task when that gentleman airily blew in from the country 
 a few days later. Blynn s flush of annoyance was but 
 momentary. He stooped over to adjust the roll of his 
 trousers leg, and Pennington missed the quick gleam of 
 apprehension that sprung into his eyes. An instant 
 later he was facing his friend, a subdued, disturbed look 
 in his face. "Old man," he said, as if with an effort, 
 "it s just as we ve all feared. She s older than we ve 
 been able to understand, living with her as we do. I Ve 
 noticed it for some time. George, she s she s losing 
 her memory. You know what that means. Senility, 
 
 ~, -C/1 
 
 l m 
 
 M 

 
 SA 
 
 [56] 
 
 second childhood Good Lord, you don t know how 
 it s been worrying me. Her mind retains nothing 
 or practically nothing that bears on recent or current 
 events. She talks of her childhood adventures and all 
 that. You understand, don t you? It s worse than I 
 thought. She s heard us speak of you a thousand times. 
 I tell you, old man, it s hard to bear." He got up and 
 went over to the window. Pennington could see his figure 
 grow taut with emotion, and his heart warmed again to 
 the young man. 
 
 Sedgewick Blynn was saying to himself that he would 
 have to begin at once on the belated task of making 
 Pennington s name a "household word." He felt no 
 compunction whatsoever in describing his mother as in 
 the first steps of feeble-mindedness; it was an inspired 
 means of absolution. 
 
 "I ll send her roses every day, my boy, if you say it is 
 only the immediate present that interests her,"said Pen 
 nington huskily. "Let her forget them the next day, if 
 God wills, but they will make her happy for the moment." 
 
 "Thanks, old man. You re a true nobleman. / // 
 not forget it, rest assured. Now, if you don t mind, I 11 
 beg off on that little dinner to-night and go out to see 
 i-sr instead. You won t mind ?" 
 
 For the next week, little was seen of Sedgewick Blynn 
 in his old haunts or in the homes of such friends as re 
 mained in town. He declined a dozen invitations; every 
 one was aware of the fact that he was "staying home" 
 because his mother was not quite so well as usual. His 
 
 Vv ; 
 
 It 
 
 *r 
 
 dns--^ 

 
 C3 ~*<S^3 = >7* ^ jkv "- ... u <* _ . 
 
 [57] 
 
 sisters were secretly apprehensive. They wondered how 
 large his bills were that his mother, sooner or later, would 
 volunteer to pay. Incidentally, they were hearing a 
 great deal about the wonderful George Pennington. It 
 was easily impressed upon them that his daily roses were 
 a most distinguished tribute to his dearest friend. To 
 their amazement, however, Sedgewick had no bills that 
 required instant attention. 
 
 Pretty Miss Carnahan, now desperately in love with 
 Blynn, spent an uneasy but somewhat exalted week. 
 Other fair ladies may have been just as uneasy, but they 
 were not in a position to complain, even to themselves. 
 This particular debutante had come to regard herself as 
 the chosen one among all the ladies at Sedgewick s court; 
 he plainly had given her to understand as much. Tenta 
 tively, they were engaged. She was too young to realise 
 that becoming engaged is no longer regarded as a serious 
 or even a permanent affection of the heart; expert love- 
 doctors make light of it, in fact. They have come to 
 treat it as a rash, so to speak. But it is quite contagious 
 among otherwise normally healthy members of society. 
 
 Her exaltation was due to the cause which kept him 
 away from her for a whole unhappy week his per 
 fectly adorable consideration for his mother. She had 
 returned to town for a fortnight, solely to be near him, 
 but she made herself believe that it was a joy to sacri 
 fice herself to a cause so noble. It was, of course, not 
 beyond Bessie Carnahan to be jealous; she had lost no 
 little sleep over his care-free wanderings into other fields. 

 
 
 [58] 
 
 It was quite easy for her to hate Beatrice Gray, who 
 had been out a year longer than herself, and to whom 
 Sedgewick paid unmistakable homage between times, 
 as it were. 
 
 Miss Carnahan, putting it bluntly to herself, made 
 not the slightest doubt that they were quite deep in a 
 flirtation. Nor was Miss Gray the only young lady to 
 whom he was conspicuously agreeable. Moreover, she 
 had reason to resent his attentions to certain young and 
 charming married women of the smart set. There had 
 been queer things said of his goings-on with Mrs. Field 
 ing; and then there was blond, airy Mrs. Thorp who 
 had virtually introduced him to the exclusive set. They 
 were surely to be taken into consideration by a tenta 
 tively engaged girl. Besides, people were beginning to 
 link his name with that of Mrs. Johnny Gordon, George 
 Pennington s young married sister. They, too, were seen 
 together very often of late, and usually without Johnny 
 on hand as a counter-balance. Mrs. Gordon was very 
 pretty and very smart and altogether very much worth 
 while. 
 
 Before the end of her first week in town, Miss 
 Carnahan found herself prey to a dozen different 
 and equally dismal doubts, each doubt being com 
 prehensive of a separate and distinct member of her 
 own sex. 
 
 He telephoned to her frequently, but it was not until 
 the second week of her stay that he professed a willing 
 ness to leave his mother. He came to see Bessie one 

 
 J^it/ /sJ>u^ 
 
 [59] 
 
 evening. She was full of her doubts and misgivings, 
 and she was young enough to be eager to set them at 
 rest without delay or diplomacy. 
 
 They sat in the narrow, vine-screened balcony which 
 opened from the hall up-stairs and looked down upon 
 
 lj V V x"""^ if 
 
 the avenue with a cool, aloof exclusiveness that de 
 fended it from the stare of the curious, who, it seems, 
 have eyes for nothing but the palatial. The buzz of 
 the night came up to them, laden with sounds near and 
 afar, sounds unheeded, unnoticed, yet forever dinning 
 in the senseless ears of the Babel-dwellers. He gently 
 caressed the slim hand of the girl; twice he had kissed 
 it tenderly. Something in his manner told her that he 
 was depressed, even disturbed over the condition of his 
 mother. A new and sweeter tone vibrated in his voice 
 when he spoke of her; the week had been one of rare 
 joy and contentment to her, and he could never forget 
 that he was in a measure responsible. The vain girl s 
 heart warmed itself once more before the fires of its 
 own sacrifice. 
 
 Sedgewick could not tell her, of course, that a large 
 part of his depression was due to the kindly though 
 rather imperative warning that his best friend had given 
 him earlier in the evening. Pennington had advised 
 him to choose between Miss Carnahan and Miss Gray, 
 or cease his attentions to both. 
 
 " People are bound to give you the devil if you keep 
 on trifling with the one you don t intend to marry," he 
 had said, rather seriously. 
 
 ,r<5^Vi
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 [60] 
 
 "But suppose that I don t intend to marry either of 
 them," was Sedgewick s reply, a trace of defiance in his 
 voice. 
 
 "Then people will be quite right in giving you the 
 devil, my boy," replied the other, after a long look into 
 the young man s eyes. "Moreover, I d give up running 
 after Mrs. Fielding. It does n t matter just now, per 
 haps, but if some of these other women take it into their 
 heads to pay you off one way or another, you 11 come a 
 hard cropper. You can t play with two fires at the same 
 time, Sedge. One of them is bound to burn out. For 
 give me for speaking quite plainly, but I m older than 
 you, and I ve seen other men playing with fire. It 
 does n t pay." 
 
 "I don t have anything to do with chorus girls and 
 that sort, George. By gad, I m doing nothing wrong," 
 he exclaimed resentfully. 
 
 "My dear boy, don t try to convince yourself that all 
 the wrong in the world lies in the chorus girl." 
 
 "I m not saying anything against em." 
 
 "Well, it doesn t matter," said the other, with a 
 friendly smile. "I hope you won t take what I ve said 
 amiss. You re popular, you re a favourite everywhere. 
 Every one likes you and 
 
 "Oh, not every one," muttered Blynn. 
 
 " you can t afford to jeopardise this good opinion. 
 I don t know whether you can afford to marry, but I m 
 quite sure that you re good enough for any one of the 
 girls. You d make your way without their money."
 
 [61] 
 
 BIynn gave him a quick look and then his face lightened 
 perceptibly. "But, Sedge, don t get a reputation for 
 being a flirt, a trifler. It s hard to live down even 
 after you are married; and, more than all this, don t 
 put yourself in the position of having your motives 
 questioned. Don t do anything to jeopardise the 
 good name of any young and foolish er married 
 woman." 
 
 With this he turned away to relight his cigar. Blynn 
 looked at his back for an instant, the red flush of resent 
 ment leaping to his cheeks. Then a sudden pallor crept 
 up to replace the flame; his eyes grew wide and then 
 narrowed in the eager intent to read the other s mind. 
 A chill swept over him, his fingers moved restlessly; a 
 feeling of apprehension that became almost a conviction 
 seized upon him. Did Pennington mean but no, he 
 could not suspect anything like that ! That would be 
 too bad ! It would mean the beginning of the end, and, 
 after all, Sedgewick Blynn was a special kind of coward : 
 he was afraid of the unspoken reproach. No, he said 
 to himself, even as his heart stood still with strange 
 alarm, Pennington could not have had that in mind 
 when he so coolly warned him against jeopardising 
 Good Lord, he could not have heard anything like that ! 
 Why, he would be the last man to hear gossip of that 
 sort! 
 
 < V v) S2) 
 
 His hand shook as he flecked the ash from his cigar 
 ette. He cast two furtive glances at his now silent 
 friend, one of doubt, the other of decision. In that
 
 . 
 
 1 
 
 
 fr 
 
 [62] 
 
 instant he made up his mind to take no chances against 
 losing this man s friendship. There was too much at 
 stake. It was not too late. He had come to recognise 
 the peril in ample time to avoid the catastrophe. 
 
 "Thanks, old man," he said, and his voice was husky 
 with an emotion which the other man misinterpreted. 
 "You are always right. I never realised what it might 
 mean this frivoling of mine." 
 
 "You take it in good heart, Sedge?" asked the older 
 man wistfully. 
 
 "Certainly. And, truly, I am much obliged. It s 
 damn good of you to talk to me as you have." 
 
 Ten minutes later he was in the telephone booth 
 down-stairs talking with Mrs. Johnny Gordon, explain 
 ing in a hurried sort of way that it would be impossible 
 for him to keep his engagement to corre to her little 
 Bridge party that evening. She did not play, and he 
 had promised to amuse her while the others fought in 
 secret wrath over the card tables. She pleaded and 
 stormed and pouted, but he was firm; he was sorry, 
 but something unexpected had turned up. He hung up 
 the receiver with a sigh a sigh that was almost pa 
 thetic in its renunciation. 
 
 "I hated to do that," he said to himself, over and over 
 again. He still remained in the booth, debating a ques 
 tion that now seemed to be forcing itself upon him. 
 At last, he sighed again and took down the receiver. 
 He was convincing himself in that instant that he had 
 decided the question, "for good and all." 
 
 TflL./s/r _gS*L_ . fiTI - (/" 
 
 r/ 
 
 </ \l Y 
 
 fa> / n 
 ^gJLA
 
 
 He called up the Carnahan home and asked Bessie 
 if he might come over, in the event that she expected to 
 be quite alone. It had required some strength of pur 
 pose on his part to decide whether to call up Miss Car 
 nahan, Miss Gray, or the one he had carried over from 
 the previous season, Miss Elsmore. 
 
 If 
 
 \ II /~* 3 ^ 
 
 
 f^-f 

 
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 COMPOSITE HEROISM 
 
 IT was his policy to belittle himself to Miss Car- 
 nahan, confident that she felt she knew him well 
 enough to resent the all but heroic self-abasement. 
 
 "My dear," he said to her lightly, after he had played 
 with her emotions for half an hour or more, "you 
 should n t love me, you really should not. I m scan 
 dalously heartless, and you are nothing but heart. We d 
 make a sorry combination. You d find me out in a 
 little while, and well, I shudder to think of what 
 you d think." He lighted his fifth cigarette and smiled 
 his most alluring smile. 
 
 She laughed in ruthless response to his mood. "You 
 would find me out, too, at the same time. I don t be 
 lieve I II ever get over being a fool about you." She 
 added the last words with a soft break in her voice that 
 moved him in spite of his arrant conceitedness. 
 
 "That s just it, dear," he said, with quaint despair. 
 "That s just what people would be calling you if you 
 married me." 
 
 "Nonsense!" she cried, resentful at the mere thought 
 of it. 
 
 3TD >S^ 

 
 [65] 
 
 "But I love you I do love you!" he burst forth 
 intensely. That was enough. No one could say it as 
 he did; no one could have so thrilled her with those 
 oft-repeated words. She was young, but she was not 
 without experience. Other youths had told her as 
 much as he, but, ah, there was such a difference ! She 
 had not yet got beyond the stage when she must catch 
 her breath and tremble every time he uttered the magic 
 cry. 
 
 After many minutes she drew away, faint with exal 
 tation, yet possessed of an ever-recurring sense of guilt 
 and apprehension. In all the weeks of their fervid love- 
 making, she had never been quite free from this strange 
 feeling of restraint; it always came, with subtle insist 
 ence, at the very instant when she felt herself being 
 carried completely away by his impelling ardour. She 
 did not know it then, but it was the real woman re 
 volting against the thing that was not real. Something 
 within her reasoned, and she was shamed without 
 knowing why. If it had been the true, undying love 
 that spent itself in these manifestations, her timid wo 
 manhood would not have shrunk back into itself at 
 such moments as these. This was but the passing of a 
 restless young dream in which she was half awake all 
 the time. 
 
 Sedgewick Blynn had uttered the same words to other 
 girls in the same fervent way. But he was always able 
 to convince himself that he meant them. 
 
 "Sedgewick. dear, I wonder " she hesitated, a pec 
 
 

 
 plexed look in her dark eyes "I wonder if you really 
 love me better than all else in the world." There 
 was a pleading, uncertain quaver in her voice. 
 
 He looked properly aggrieved. "Bessie, darling, why 
 do you say that ? Do you can you doubt me ? Good 
 h eaven, I m I m mad about you. I know I m not 
 worthy of your love, dearest, but Oh, you must be 
 lieve that I d give my whole life to possess and cherish it." 
 
 She looked at him steadily, the strange doubt still 
 lingering in her mind. "Oh, I do hope you have never 
 said that to any other girl," she whispered. 
 
 "To any other girl!" he ejaculated in fine 
 horror. "My soul, what do you think I am ?" 
 
 She dissolved. "Don t please don t be angry, 
 Sedgewick. I m so yes, I am so jealous. I can t 
 bear the thought of of 
 
 "Of what, dearest?" he asked, patting her hand con 
 solingly. 
 
 "Well, that you may be interested in Beatrice Gray. 
 Now, don t laugh at me. I can t help it. Every one 
 says you are devoted to her. They come to me with it 
 just because they want to say something hateful. I 
 know you like her. But I I hate her!" 
 
 "Dear me!" he scoffed gently. "You almost con 
 vince me that Beatrice is really interested in me. She is 
 pretty, you 11 admit." 
 
 "Don t be mean ! You re just saying that to irritate 
 me. You can be so hateful, Sedgewick." 
 
 He realised more than ever how young she was. 
 
 WJJ 

 
 [6 7 ] 
 
 " Dear little girl, you 11 be very unhappy, and you II 
 grow old and get wrinkles before your time if you let 
 jealousy get hold of you. It s an awful trouble. Girls 
 get green all over and " 
 
 "They don t! They get blue all over. Tell me, 
 right now, Sedgewick Blynn, are you ever going to have 
 anything more to do with Beatrice Gray ? I must know." 
 She resisted his attempt to take her in his arms. "You ve 
 just got to choose between us!" 
 
 He turned very serious. "You hurt me more than you 
 can possibly know," he said. "I have told you I love 
 only you. You doubt me. I can t do any more than 
 repeat that I love you. If you really care for me you 
 will not doubt that love. You will not take it out on 
 poor Beatrice Gray, who is nothing to me she s a 
 good friend and a good sort, and you don t mean what 
 you say about her. When I tell you that I love 
 you better than my life, that ought to prove to you 
 that I have chosen, if such a thing as choosing is 
 necessary." 
 
 "Forgive me, dearest. I m a cat a little beast of 
 a cat." 
 
 "Don t cry, darling. There, now! We ll forget 
 what s happened. It s better to quarrel before we re 
 married than after." For a long time they were silent. 
 He was turning something over in his active brain. "I 
 wonder what your father will say when I ask him for 
 you." 
 
 "He ll do anything I wish," she said confidently.
 
 *<3- 
 
 [68] 
 
 She always had had everything she wanted, so why 
 not a husband of her own choosing ? 
 
 "But you are so young." 
 
 "Not so young as I was last fall, when I came out," 
 she said wisely. "Dear me, I 11 never forget how 
 sleepy I used to be when I went to the theatre, or 
 when people called and stayed after my old bedtime. 
 But now I can stay up all night. I never want 
 to sleep, except at breakfast time. But, papa will 
 understand." 
 
 "I m not so sure of that." 
 
 "Besides, I don t want to be married for a couple of 
 years," she went on serenely. "I must have at least 
 two seasons as Miss Carnahan. So, you see, we won t 
 have to say anything to father just yet." 
 
 He looked at her with a curious chill in his heart. 
 To himself he said: "You little wretch! If I give you 
 two years you 11 have forgotten me completely. I know 
 girls too well." Aloud he said: "I don t like the idea 
 of keeping it a secret. I m honest, and I don t think 
 it s right to do anything in the dark. Your father 
 must be told, if it s to be a real engagement." 
 
 She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, 
 quite frankly: "But it wouldn t be wise, Sedgewick. 
 Papa likes you, but he well, he is n t quite satisfied 
 with your business prospects. Don t scowl so ! He 11 
 think differently, I know. I know you 11 succeed, and 
 you 11 be a great man. You can t help it. But these 
 old men can t understand that it takes time. They are 

 
 VI 
 
 so foolish about it. Papa s one of them and he s 
 he s rather set in his ways. Don t you think it would 
 be wise to wait a just a little while ? It might spoil 
 everything to ask him now." 
 
 Sedgewick felt something come into his throat and 
 stick. He knew that James Carnahan was not the man 
 to allow his daughter to throw hersel 7 away, and he 
 knew, even better than she, that it would be suicidal to 
 speak to him at all. He realised that he had but one 
 chance to win her for his wife. He would have to in 
 duce her to consent to an elopement before the glamour 
 wore off of the adventure. 
 
 "Of course, dear one, it is for you to say. I can t 
 do anything without your consent. I don t like it, under 
 stand. I want you now as soon as possible. I don t 
 want to wait and I don t want to hold you to a secret 
 pledge. I I shall tell my mother, of course. You 
 see, I m used to going to her with everything. That s 
 why I wanted to speak to your father at once, I suppose. 
 Am I too old-fashioned and silly?" 
 
 "You re the dearest thing in the world! How proud 
 your mother must be of you." 
 
 Half an hour later, she found herself unable to resist 
 the impulse to dig into his friendship for Mrs. Fielding 
 and Mrs. Thorpe and, last of all, Mrs. Johnny Gordon. 
 He pooh-poohed all that she charged in her semi-playful 
 way. 
 
 "But Mrs. Johnny Gordon! She is so pretty and so 
 wonderfully clever. I am really afraid of her. And 

 
 
 
 [70] 
 
 you are such a great friend of her brother, George 
 Pennington. You must see a great deal of her." 
 
 "I haven t seen her in weeks, my dear, so there. 
 We re friends on George s account. Now, are you 
 done with teasing me ? " 
 
 The telephone bell rang at that instant. There was a 
 wall phone in the hallway just inside the balcony door. 
 The girl flew to it with the briefest, most incontinent 
 apology. Where he sat, he could distinctly hear her 
 part of the conversation. It was not long before the 
 identity of the faraway talker was revealed to him. He 
 felt himself grow red and white by turns; a bleak smile 
 of self-commiseration flitted across his face, and then 
 his mind began to work rapidly in the effort to build up 
 a defence. 
 
 The person at the other end of the wire was George 
 Pennington s sister, Mrs. Johnny Gordon. 
 
 One sentence uttered by Miss Carnahan, in a rather 
 flustered treble, was sufficient to destroy all hope of 
 tranquillity for him. Under his breath he said: "That 
 damned little cat ! " He did not refer to Miss Carnahan. 
 
 The girl was saying: "It s awfully sweet of you, Mrs. 
 Gordon, but really it s too late. I should so like to 
 come over for the supper. You re too dear for anything. 
 I 11 tell Mr. Blynn that you wanted him, too. Perhaps 
 ne d like to come over any way. . . . No, his mother 
 is very much better. ... I think he s staying at the 
 club to-night." She called out to Sedgewick: "Aren t 
 you, Mr. Blynn?" 
 
 ^M. 

 
 "For a long time they were silent"
 
 [71] 
 
 "Who is it?" asked Mr. Blynn, affecting a splendid 
 ignorance. 
 
 "He says he s awfully sorry," she said into the trans 
 mitter, fibbing blithely. "He s going out to his mother s 
 when he leaves here." 
 
 Sedgewick felt more uncomfortable than before. There 
 was a spitefulness in her voice that he did not like. 
 
 "Is it Mrs. Gordon? Tell her that I promised my 
 mother that I d 
 
 But she was chattering on glibly: "Yes, he s very 
 devoted to her. . . . You saw him at luncheon ? . . . 
 Oh ! . . . Yes, he does play rather a good game. . . . 
 I see. . . . Yes, I think he did say that he d dined 
 at your house last night. . . . Well, good-night. So 
 sorry I can t come over. I 11 tell him." 
 
 She hung up the receiver and returned to the balcony. 
 
 "I wish she d let me alone," he blurted out irascibly, 
 suddenly deciding on a mode of action. "She s nice 
 and all that, but, hang it all, a fellow gets tired of being 
 dragged into all sorts of things at her house just because 
 Johnny s got to have some one to play Bridge with him 
 all the time." 
 
 The girl looked at him quietly for a moment, a cool 
 smile on her lips. "Don t you want to go over there 
 now ? It s only ten o clock." 
 
 "No, of course not," he exploded. "I m where I 
 want to be. She pursues me like a hawk. It s awful ! 
 If it were not for George Pentiington I d tell her plainly 
 that I don t want to be bothered by "
 
 [72] 
 
 "Listen, Sedgewick; are you having an an affair 
 with her ? " 
 
 "Lord, no! You can t call it that. That s putting 
 it too strongly. She s devoted to her husband 
 
 "I know. But that doesn t prevent you from being 
 devoted to her." 
 
 "Don t be silly, dear. She s all right. She s always 
 rushing some fellow, don t you know ? But it s perfectly 
 harmless." 
 
 "You were there last night." 
 
 "For a few minutes. I d forgotten it. George and 
 I stopped in on our way down from the Country Club." 
 
 "She said she had n t seen her brother in a week." 
 
 "Pooh! She s dreaming," he said easily. 
 
 "You d better go over to her place," she insisted 
 stubbornly. "You 11 have a much better time there 
 than here. Besides, I m going to bed before long." 
 
 "If you mean that you want me to leave, I 11 go, 
 Bessie," he said stiffly, arising from his chair. "But I 
 shall not go over to Mrs. Gordon s. I m not going to 
 be dragged around by her any more, let me tell you that. 
 I m sick of her plain sick. Good-night!" 
 
 She detained him with a quick gesture. "Are you 
 angry ? I was hateful. Don t go please ! I know 
 she s been running after you abominably, and you ve 
 tried to keep me from finding it out. After all, it was 
 the manly thing to do. Sit down, dear. I did n t mean 
 to be so horrid." 
 
 He sat down, triumphant. After he left her at mid-
 
 tfS. 
 
 \r\l. 
 
 m % 
 
 [73] 
 
 night, she went to bed to lie awake and wonder for hours 
 if anything in the world could be more delicious than 
 his pretty picture of an elopement. Of course, she knew 
 that he was jesting, but, oh, how dear it would be if 
 they could only dare attempt it all in "real earnest." 
 
 To himself he was arguing: "I ve got to do it pretty 
 soon, or it will all go up in smoke. The old man 
 would n t pick me as a son-in-law not in a thousand 
 years. It s up to me to pick him as a father-in-law, 
 but I Ve got to do it when he is n t expecting it. By 
 Jove, I believe she ll do it, too!" Again he reflected: 
 "I 11 have to call that woman down, good and hard. 
 She called up the house, just to find out if I was there. 
 She s a damned cat. I would n t have believed it, 
 either." 
 
 It was quite late when he dropped from a street car 
 and turned into the street where George Pennington 
 lived. He was going up to sleep in his rooms. The 
 little side street was very dark and entirely deserted, 
 except for a man who walked in the same direction half 
 a block ahead. Suddenly Blynn s attention was at 
 tracted by something that caused him to stare hard 
 down the street. 
 
 The figure ahead had been joined by several men, 
 shadowy forms that seemed to come up out of the side 
 walk and blend into one solid mass at the mouth of the 
 alley. There was something so sinister about it all that 
 he instinctively felt the clutch of tragedy at his throat. 
 An instant later he was clearly cognizant of the fact 
 
 PS* . rtn__C7 JSrta 
 
 
 
 o 

 
 Ic^afe^ 
 
 [74] 
 
 that he was actually witnessing the thing he had read 
 about and dreaded for years a hold-up ! 
 
 His fellow night-farer was being robbed within a 
 block of the brilliant boulevard almost under the 
 the eaves of the big hotels and clubs that lined the way 
 beyond. There was no mistaking the situation; it was 
 all very clear to him. He heard the sound of a blow; 
 then a stifled groan came to his ears. 
 
 Sedgewick Blynn was a moral but not a physical 
 coward. He was strong and he was full of the spirit 
 that makes heroes of untried men. It was enough 
 for him that a defenceless man was being beset by 
 vicious cowards, armed and prepared for the encounter. 
 A thrill of wild exhilaration shot through him. With a 
 shout of encouragement, he dashed forward and, almost 
 before the assailants were aware cf his presence in the 
 street, he was upon them. 
 
 A man, the victim, was standing with his back to the 
 wall, his hands uplifted. Even in his excitement, Blynn 
 could see that his long frame tottered, and something 
 told him that blood was streaming down his face. 
 
 One of the three assailants turned and fired point 
 blank at the newcomer. Blynn afterwards avowed, and 
 with truth, that he heard the bullet as it whizzed past 
 his head. His heavy walking stick swung squarely upon 
 the fellow s head and he went down with a groan. Still 
 shouting for help, Sedgewick hurled himself upon the 
 nearest ruffian, striking wildly with his fists. The third 
 man darted up the alley, and a second later fired reck-
 
 [751 
 
 lessly toward the struggling group, for their victim had 
 joined Blynn in the attack. The man with whom they 
 engaged had no time to draw his revolver from the 
 pocket to which it had been restored while he searched 
 the person of their prey. He fought fiercely with his 
 hands and feet and gave as good as he received. 
 
 The rush of footsteps down the street came to tneir 
 ears. Blynn, taking a savage blow in the face, clinched 
 with the desperado, clasping his arms about him in 
 such a way as to frustrate his efforts to reach his revolver. 
 As they swayed backward and forward, gasping and 
 cursing, the street seemed to fill with rushing men. 
 Almost before they knew that help was at hand, they 
 were torn apart and a crowd of men surrounded them. 
 Policemen came quickly at the heels of the cabmen who 
 had been first to the rescue. There were shrill whistles, 
 loud shouts, and then Blynn found himself being led 
 away with the two thugs and their staggering victim. He 
 was dizzy and there was a frightful pain in his head. 
 
 "Let go of me!" he cried angrily to the officer who 
 supported him. "I m no thief!" 
 
 "We 11 wait and find out," was the sententious re 
 mark of the burly bluecoat. 
 
 Later, the two desperadoes were taken off in the 
 patrol wagon. It was then that Blynn made his way 
 through the excited crowd to the side of the man who 
 had been held up. He wiped the blood from his own 
 face, great clots of it. His eye was swollen shut by this 
 time, and his knee was stiff and sore from the vicious
 
 
 
 [76] 
 
 kick it had received. Two men were trying to take the 
 stranger into the club, but he was holding back, ex 
 claiming that he must see his rescuer. 
 
 "Great Scott!" shouted Blynn, stopping short as he 
 came up with the blood-covered objector. "Pen- 
 nington!" 
 
 "Blynn!" 
 
 Together they were taken into the club house by 
 attendants, talking wildly all the while in their amaze 
 ment. Neither was badly hurt. While they were being 
 bathed and cared for by the attendants, pending the 
 arrival of the surgeon, they went over the experience 
 with all the eagerness of excited boys, pounding each 
 other on the back or shaking hands by turn, neither 
 quite clear in his mind as to the reality of the situation. 
 
 While the surgeon was closing the ugly cut in Pen- 
 nington s head, that gentleman was drowsily observing 
 to his valiant young friend, on whose bandaged eye re 
 posed a beefsteak from the culinary regions below: 
 
 "Sedge, you were a damn fool for taking the chance 
 you did, but it was the bravest thing I ve ever known. 
 You deserve a halo, my boy!" 
 
 Sedgewick groaned disconsolately. "It wouldn t fit, 
 old man. Look at this lopsided head of mine!" 
 
 "I said that you deserved it. I did n t say that you d 
 ever get it. A fellow never gets what s coming to him 
 in the way of haloes. But, if I live to be a thousand 
 years old, my boy, I 11 not forget that I owe you one, 
 just the same." He said it with such sincere feeling
 
 r .O 
 
 "V 
 
 [771 
 experienced an almost 
 
 unholy glow of 
 
 that Blynn 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " I did it for the sheer joy of the thing, George," he 
 protested, and he was quite honest in saying so. "It 
 was a bully diversion. It s been damned dull in town 
 for the past few weeks. I needed the exercise." 
 
 "Be that as it may, it s more than probable that you 
 saved my life. No telling what they might have done 
 to me. I 11 not forget it, old fellow." 
 
 "I d have done the same for the lowliest bum on 
 the streets," went on Sedgewick. "To be perfectly 
 candid, as I look back on it, I don t understand how 
 I happened to have the pluck to take a hand in the 
 affair. I did n t know that I had so much nerve." 
 
 "Take my advice: don t do it again," said Penning- 
 ton. "A bullet is a sure cure for courage. You came 
 near to getting your medicine, too." 
 
 They were closer and better friends than ever. Pen- 
 nington never tired of paying tribute to this new and 
 almost sensational quality that had cropped out in the 
 make-up of the young trifler. The city rang with stories 
 of his courage ; he took on a fresh atmosphere of interest ; 
 his world loved a hero quite as much as it loved a lover. 
 
 For nine days Blynn was the most talked-of and the 
 most talked-to young man in the city. Worshippers of 
 the opposite sex fairly deluged him with attentions. He 
 had the good sense to accept adulation with a quaint 
 modesty that made his achievements stand out more 
 boldly by contrast.
 
 [78] 
 
 Bessie Carnahan was quite ready to run away with 
 him at any time, and she was not alone in that respect. 
 
 Before the end of a week, Pennington had bought 
 from his friend something like a hundred thousand 
 shares in the vague copper mining bonanza he was pro 
 moting in behalf of a newly organised company that 
 promised much for little. Also, the accommodating Mr. 
 Blynn managed to "let him in" on several fine tips 
 from the stock exchange. 
 
 It is worthy of note that Sedgewick Blynn suddenly 
 paid up all of his bills about town, and re-established 
 his credit by showing a neat balance in the banks. He 
 lived hard on easy money, and his conscience gave him 
 no manner of uneasiness. 
 
 Pennington was rich and was able to take his losses 
 with a sturdy indifference that surprised even the opti 
 mistic Blynn, who heroically undertook to shoulder the 
 blame for having drawn him into certain unfortunate 
 speculations. He openly deplored the fact that he had 
 already spent his own miserable commission. 
 
 IW 
 
 
 ^j-L>^ tzL^^--^^,/&\r 
 __ z^^ *V }/-> 
 
 ^ 
 
 S=^^
 
 
 GHAPTER V 
 
 A WEEK-END 
 
 HIS rather imposing summer drew toward an 
 end. Week-end jaunts to the country places 
 were fewer; people were beginning to straggle 
 back to the city from all parts of the big world. He 
 had lived off the fat of his adventure with the bandits; 
 he had prospered snugly in the traffic for which he was 
 best qualified, pleasure. Every one had been nicer to 
 him than ever before; thus he throve on kindness and 
 the warm things of life. He was not the kind who would 
 endure the cold, nor could he bear the vista when it is 
 bleak and grey. Rose-tinted glasses were constantly 
 between him and his view of life, and with rose-tinted 
 glasses one may always temper the ugliness that abounds. 
 The affair with Miss Carnahan had reached the acute 
 stage. Plans for an elopement had passed the point 
 where they ceased to be trivial and infantile. The 
 spoiled, vain, headstrong girl was easily moved by the 
 romantic picture he knew so well how to draw. She 
 reveled in the prospect of a real love match; her little 
 soul was full of silly cravings for an adventurous honey 
 moon. To run away with the most popular beau in 
 town! To be published broadcast as the beautiful 
 
 s 
 
 -OT 
 
 
 ^-^! 
 
 0*0 
 
 2$aj 
 
 >*?*! 
 
 6
 
 [8o] 
 
 heroine of a real love story ! To be the one person 
 most talked about during the season to come ! It would 
 be much nicer than getting married at home; for it is 
 quite certain that she had no doubts as to the tracta- 
 bility of her parent, even though he may have been 
 opposed to Sedgewick Blynn from the beginning. Sedge- 
 wick was not slow to take advantage of this romantic, 
 though somewhat petulant, way of looking at a situation 
 which he understood much better than she. 
 
 He realised that a secret marriage was the only one 
 in which he could participate if he aimed so high as this. 
 
 Still, he found it very hard to forget the soft blue eyes 
 and piquant face of Beatrice Gray. She was a dear! 
 And she loved him, he knew. Alas, how bitterly inade 
 quate is the law of choice : Beatrice Gray was quite as 
 poor as Bessie was rich. He easily persuaded himself 
 into believing that there was no real peril in seeing 
 Beatrice quite frequently, in a way; he was perfectly 
 sure of himself; besides, she would get over it as all 
 girls do. What if she did seem to resent his friendship 
 for Bessie Carnahan ? It was quite natural that she 
 should be jealous. A young girl s prerogative ! Pooh ! 
 
 Bessie Carnahan refused point blank to run away 
 with him until everybody was back in town for the 
 season. That meant November. So it was decided that 
 the flight should not be taken until just before the 
 Charity Ball, a most propitious period in the season s 
 calendar. 
 
 Accordingly he laid his plans. Pennington took on a
 
 eft 
 
 [8i] 
 
 fresh block of stock in a Southern railway project, and 
 two of his friends followed his example without con 
 sulting him beforehand. Sedgewick coolly set aside the 
 bulk of his commissions for the great day to come. 
 Business was picking up, he told his mother and sisters. 
 
 To their amazement and joy, he paid the doctor s 
 account and gave his mother a hundred-dollar bill be 
 sides. The old lady was pleased beyond reason. She 
 confidently proclaimed to the sisters that he was just 
 beginning to show what he really was made of. "From 
 now on," was her serene declaration. She knew that in 
 time he would repay all of the money he had borrowed 
 from her for his business. They would not have to 
 skimp to make both ends meet as they had been doing 
 for the past six months. No; she had not cast her bread 
 upon still waters. It would be driven back to her by 
 the tide of fortune. The few thousands he had invested 
 for her, on the advice of that astute financier, James 
 Carnahan, would bring back a harvest of golden fruit. 
 Ah, how good it was that her son could go to the great 
 James Carnahan for counsel and advice ! 
 
 The old lady was failing in health so rapidly that 
 even Sedgewick could see the changes when he made 
 his brief, infrequent visits to the place in Lombard 
 Avenue. She had a cough, and there was a frail look 
 about her that shocked him more and more as the weeks 
 went by. Somehow she clung to him with a firmer 
 clasp as her hands lost their vigour and strength. He 
 could feel something new and strange and pitiful in the 
 
 Mtv*f^r oi .
 
 [82] 
 
 touch of her hand, in the sweep of her lips, in the caress 
 of her glance. There was dawning upon him that which 
 had long been known to his sisters : she was nearing 
 the end. 
 
 He humbly accepted the mild advice of the elder 
 sister and began to spend more of his nights at home. 
 Somehow, in his heart, he was afraid of what was coming 
 to them. He told Pennington. Pennington put a hand 
 upon his shoulder and said simply: 
 
 "I shall never forget when it happened to me, Sedge 
 wick. I loved my mother, just as you love yours. Stick 
 by her these days, my boy. You 11 feel happier when 
 it s all over if you do." 
 
 Money matters grew worse at the Blynn home, but 
 the old lady was imperative in her commands that nothing 
 should be said about them to Sedgewick. She would 
 not have him worried and harassed now that he was 
 on the very point of bounding upward to success. The 
 least discouragement, she maintained, might cause him 
 to falter; his father always had said that he would 
 have been a millionaire if he had not been broken in 
 the start. The bank account had dwindled to almost 
 nothing; there was little or no income from the invest 
 ments that Sedgewick had made; the dividends that 
 once had come to them from good securities seemed 
 now to have ceased altogether. The old lady would 
 not have him to know that she had sacrificed practi 
 cally all of the good investments in order to fall in with 
 his splendid schemes for advancement. It is doubtful 
 
 Xi
 
 
 
 
 if this sanguine, calloused young financier ever sensed 
 the fact that he was wiping out the means of sustenance 
 upon which his mother and sisters were dependent. He 
 gave no thought to figures; he was not one to consider 
 limitations. 
 
 One day Mrs. Blynn, whose trembling fingers had 
 gone over the waning figures a hundred times in these 
 latter months, calmly announced to her daughters that 
 she was going "over town" to consult with Mr. Carnahan 
 about the investments which her son had made through 
 him. 
 
 "He was a very great friend of your father s, my dears," 
 she announced, "and I am sure he will give me a little 
 of his time, for his sake, if no other. Don t argue, Hettie. 
 I am going. I must see just what he thinks of the invest 
 ments as they are to-day. No doubt they were good 
 when he advised Sedgewick to put the money into them, 
 but but one can never tell what may happen in the 
 stock market. Don t say anything to Sedgewick. It 
 would annoy him terribly if he knew that I had done 
 such a thing. He d he d think I did not believe in 
 him." 
 
 And so the mother of Sedgewick Blynn went to the 
 offices of the great James Carnahan to ask about the few 
 paltry, miserable thousands that had been introduced 
 into the august company of millions ! Colonel Carnahan \ 
 received her as he should have received the widow of a 
 dear and old-time friend. She had not been mistaken 
 in predicting the welcome beforehand. 

 
 [84] 
 
 The old lady scarcely had begun her timid, faltering 
 remarks, when he suddenly interrupted her to ask his 
 secretary and his stenographer to withdraw from the 
 room. He closed the door after them himself. Then he 
 heard what she had to say of the investments Sedgewick 
 had made at his suggestion ! 
 
 October saw Sedgewick rampant in multiplying duties; 
 he was manager of the open-air horse show, director of 
 the tennis tourney, ringmaster in the amateur circus, 
 and chairman of the board of governors for the Rose 
 Cotillion the smartest ball of each succeeding season. 
 If he noted the alarming progress of his mother s illness, 
 he lost sight of it readily in contemplation of the renewed 
 social activities, to say nothing of a certain stupendous 
 affair of his own. 
 
 Next-door neighbour to the Blynns in Lombard Avenue 
 lived a Mr. Thomas O Brien, one time assistant to Sedge- 
 wick s father, now a rheumatic invalid of slender means 
 and wide philosophy. The Blynns and the O Briens 
 were friendly neighbours of long standing. Kate O Brien, 
 on whom poverty sat lightly, for she had never known 
 affluence, was now the sole support of the invalid father. 
 She was a pretty girl of twenty-five or thereabouts, quick 
 witted, resourceful, and not ashamed to wear the harness 
 that chafes the sons of Martha. Since early girlhood she 
 had toiled with the army of shop-girls who daily stream 
 into and out of the vast recesses of trade, cheerfully 
 battling her way up through the thorniest paths until
 
 ^VT 
 
 ?-ibw > 
 
 *~S> ^DSai^^k-^. S3 
 
 [85] 
 
 to-day she was an autocrat where real autocrats abound 
 m the dressmaking department of a huge and fash 
 ionable shop known to all the world of woman. An 
 autocrat was she, for she was now the head of that 
 department, and what woman is there who can or will 
 dispute the claim I make ? 
 
 Big hearted, tender, and thoughtful was this fine Irish 
 girl who dealt serenely with the great ladies of the land 
 and yet ate her lunch with the lowliest spinner in that 
 castle of avarice. She earned big wages but she put on 
 no airs; she was one of a huge army and she lived in the 
 camps that fortune had pitched for them all. What was 
 good for them was also good enough for her. 
 
 Back in the tender days of childhood she had come 
 to look upon Sedgewick Blynn as her lord and knight. 
 Time and opportunity had taken him to a higher plane. 
 She remained where she was, content with her lot, while 
 the boyish sweetheart soared far beyond her small horizon 
 into a world which she could never hope to see or touch. 
 
 But now, in these closing days of summer, when he 
 was more often at home than before, she saw him again 
 with almost daily regularity. Indeed, of late, it was no 
 uncommon thing for them to catch the same street car 
 to the city on the mornings when he was at home. Sedge- 
 wick Blynn realised that he was miles above her in the 
 social strata, but he was not above admiring the beauty, 
 and wit, and personal charm of his old-time comride, 
 her position notwithstanding. For, after all, waS she 
 not rather a noted beauty, even in the eyes of thos* bna 

 
 
 [86] 
 
 friends of his ? A bit too dashing, perhaps, and a shade 
 too striking in voice and manner, with a laugh that was 
 vulgarly merry, she was, one might say, good form in a 
 sense and very bad form in another. 
 
 Sedgewick found no little pleasure in sitting with her 
 on these street car journeys, but he was quite careful 
 to get off the car a block or two before her corner was 
 reached in the down-town district. It would never do 
 to be seen with the head dressmaker at Swan s. Perhaps 
 she understood why it was that he got off the car at one 
 corner when he should have gone on to the next; but if 
 she did, she had the tact to make no comment either to 
 him or to herself. She went sunnily along her way, 
 avoiding the shadows and looking no higher than the 
 hedge that lined her narrow lane. She understood quite 
 well that this young sprig of gentility could not afford 
 to be seen with her, and, by quite another token, she 
 realised that she could not afford to be seen with him. 
 The situation balanced quite nicely, even though the 
 conditions were not weighed in the same scales. 
 
 There may have been times when it occurred to Sedge- 
 wick Blynn that he was somewhat of a prig; but, after all, 
 wise as she was, she was a shop-girl and well, he had 
 made it a point to be circumspect in regard to chorus 
 girls and shop-girls, though why he should put them in 
 the sane category he never stopped to inquire. 
 
 At any rate, he felt warmly toward this genuinely fine 
 friend; down in his heart there was an esteem for her 
 that he could never have recognised as springing from
 
 [87] 
 
 him if it had suddenly made itself actually manifest. He 
 only knew that she was a good sort, a jolly girl, an inti 
 mate scoffer, and, moreover, a devoted, life-long friend 
 to his mother. And so, he was content to ride down-town 
 with his next-door neighbour, deriving no end of pleasure 
 in recounting to her the doings of the select upper world. 
 She was properly impressed by the part he played in all 
 that the smart set undertook. It delighted him to find 
 that she saw him in the light he loved so well. Strangely 
 enough, Kate O Brien did not think of him as a prig, 
 even though he got off* the car at the corner above. 
 
 But the clouds were beginning to form beyond Sedge 
 wick Blynn s horizon; they were little clouds, but they 
 were coming up swiftly on the wings of disaster and he 
 was ill-prepared for the storm. 
 
 George Pennington s friends were beginning to trouble 
 themselves about his affairs, slyly at first but more per 
 sistently as the feeling developed that he was being 
 imposed upon by Sedgewick Blynn. Blynn s transactions 
 had been uniformly disastrous, and there was a well- 
 defined impression that he had deliberately bilked his 
 friend. Pennington calmly laughed at the warnings 
 and informed his friends that he quite well knew where 
 he stood. 
 
 The ugly stories spread from the club into the city 
 with sly insistence; it was not long before every one 
 was saying hard things behind the back of Sedgewick 
 Blynn. 
 
 Moreover, he was paying the penalty imposed by 
 
 
 K? 
 

 
 [88] 
 
 women scorned. Mrs. Johnny Gordon was one of the 
 first to "turn up her nose" when his name was men 
 tioned in her hearing. Mrs. Thorpe, who had set him 
 down in the charmed circle, long had been given to 
 spiteful sarcasm, and the unconventional Mrs. Field 
 ing did not mince matters in expressing her views of 
 cads as she found them. Altogether, Sedgewick s star 
 was on the wane, if one looked at it from a general and 
 not a specified point of view. 
 
 George Pennington s sister at last spoke plainly to 
 her brother. She told him that Blynn was systematically 
 swindling him. 
 
 "Everybody says so, George, so there must be some- 
 
 f~ f ~ if^t^f^ 
 
 thing in it. You know you are such a careless creature 
 when it comes to money matters. He takes advantage 
 of your friendship, George, and he s actually living off 
 of what you drop into those brainless schemes of his. 
 It s rotten low, George, worse than thievery. I have 
 some respect for a thief, but for a man like Sedgewick 
 Blynn bah, how I detest a cheat ! " 
 
 Pennington smiled gravely. They were sitting on the 
 balcony of the Gordon home, awaiting the "Bridgers" 
 who were coming in after dinner, whereupon Pennington 
 was to depart. He would not play Bridge for the excel 
 lent reason that the habit was bound to draw him into 
 contact with that hopeless and multitudinous class of 
 humanity which plays the game for prizes and not for 
 profit the class which laughs when it revokes. 
 
 "My dear Judith," he answered, "I thought you
 
 
 9*? 
 
 B2. 
 
 seemed to be very much attached to Sedgewick a month 
 or two back. Why this sudden aversion ?" 
 
 She met his gaze steadily. "I was fond of him, George. 
 He amused me and I had not yet heard these tales about 
 his dealings with you. I ll confess to his courage, if 
 that s what you are banking on. He s proved himself - 
 physically. I ve had him here frequently and made a 
 good deal of him, as you know. Suddenly he began to 
 treat us as if we were clods in his path. I call that the 
 attitude of an ingrate. Don t you ?" 
 
 "It may interest you to know that I gave him a little 
 lecture a month or two ago," said he irrelevantly. 
 
 "A lecture?" 
 
 "Yes on the pernicious influence of delightful 
 frauds." 
 
 "I don t understand." 
 
 "A complex way of designating the young married 
 woman evil that threatens the youth of our land." 
 
 "Oh," she said, staring hard at him. "I see." 
 
 "I think he took it rather seriously." 
 
 "I dare say." She smiled faintly, but her heart was 
 bitter. "He takes everything you can afford to give 
 him. Advice is so cheap, however, that I don t see how 
 he came to accept it. He deals with luxuries. I won 
 der " she hesitated, her eyes narrowing "I wonder, 
 George, if you were good enough to include me in your 
 assortment of delightful frauds." 
 
 "Would you be disappointed and hurt if I should 
 answer no ? " 
 
 \UJJLi
 
 s\ CSIY 
 
 [90] 
 
 "On the contrary, I d be pleased." 
 
 "Then, you are a delightful fraud," he said, with the 
 laugh that she loved. "All of which takes us back to 
 Sedgewick Blynn. He s in love with Bessie Carnahan 
 and she with him. I was thinking of her as well as of 
 him. Do you see?" 
 
 "Quite clearly. Being a fine old bachelor, you under 
 stand the philanthropy of love. Splendid ! But, let me 
 say this to you, my dear brother; if you know as little 
 about Sedgewick Blynn s love affairs as you do about 
 his business transactions, I am not surprised that you 
 can t see through a stone wall." With this frank com 
 ment on his stupidity, she left him and went down the 
 steps to greet some new arrivals. As soon as her back 
 was turned, George Pennington s face resumed the grave 
 and troubled look it had worn of late; the taunting 
 smile left his lips and a hard line crept in at the 
 corners. 
 
 The Carnahans were coming down from their country 
 place in the hills. A final week-end party was arranged. 
 Sedgewick Blynn and George Pennington were asked 
 among others, and Tuesday was to see the return of 
 every one to the city. 
 
 Blynn fought a valiant battle with himself when the 
 time came to leave for the hills, and self won. His mother 
 was now critically ill; it was but a matter of days, if 
 not hours, until the end. The doctor brutally informed 
 him that she might live a week or a day he could not 
 tell. Pinned down to it, the medical man admitted that
 
 [9 J 
 
 she was more than likely to live a week or two, but he 
 advised the son to be within reach at all times. Sedge- 
 wick considered him a heartless brute. The two sisters 
 and Kate O Brien took turns watching at the bedside 
 of the now helpless old lady, and Sedgewick spent many 
 miserable hours about the house. 
 
 Up to the last minute, so to speak, he was firm in his 
 resolve to remain in town, anticipating the crisis. But 
 in this very last minute, the desire to join the gay set in 
 the country overcame what he now called his silly fears 
 and he announced his intention to run out of town over 
 Saturday and Sunday. He sought to reconcile his almost 
 stupefied sisters by demeaning the ability of the doctor; 
 he laughed at the assertion that the end was as "near as 
 all that." Any one could see that she was stronger than 
 she had been in days. It was all nonsense about death 
 being so near at hand. 
 
 Nevertheless, as he packed his bag on the morning of 
 departure, he sullenly asked Miss Hettie to telegraph 
 him if there should be a sudden change for the worse. 
 No, he did not expect it, of course, but it was best to 
 be prepared. 
 
 Miss Hettie flared up and wrathfully announced that 
 she would have nothing more to do with him. As he 
 left the house to catch the car, his face set and his heart 
 at war with his brain, he met Kate O Brien. She was 
 on her way to work. 
 
 "Telegraph me, Kate, please, if if she should get 
 worse?" he pleaded, even humbly.
 
 [92] 
 
 
 course I will, Sedge," she said. "You re not 
 not going away now ?" 
 
 "Just for a day or two. Can t get out of it. Mother s 
 all right. Yoa will telegraph me if you see, the girls 
 are all upset and I can t depend on them." 
 
 "I 11 telegraph if " she hesitated a moment and then 
 went on "if it s very bad." 
 
 "That s it," he said. "Thanks." 
 
 It must be said that his thoughts were not happy or 
 noble ones as he sat in the chair car which whisked him 
 toward the hills that afternoon. One thing came con 
 stantly to his mind and he could not fight it off. It was 
 always up and at him like a persistent ghost. It was 
 the recollection of a night at the horse show, a night 
 when he had taken his mother and sisters to see the world 
 of fashion. Somehow it was hurting him at this late day 
 to remember that he had found seats in the gallery, far 
 from the boxes of his fashionable friends, and that he 
 had entered almost stealthily by the doors farthest from 
 the carriage way. It was coming back to him with ugly 
 plainness that he had shrunk far down in his seat and 
 that he had been ashamed of the meanly clad women 
 who sat beside him in that gay throng. To-day he was 
 ashamed of himself. With a sharp pain in his heart, he 
 recalled his mother s simple, kindly observation that his 
 friends apparently knew him by the company he kept, 
 adding the good-humoured lament that his fine ladies 
 might well be expected to snub him if they saw him with 
 such unfashionable creatures. 
 
 

 
 _/ 
 *x 
 
 -**fr <ft 
 
 [93] 
 
 And he had been mean enough to reply: "Don t let 
 it worry you, mother. I don t care a hang." 
 
 To his surprise and dismay, he found that Beatrice 
 Gray was one of the merry house party. He was con 
 siderably upset and annoyed by the discovery. What 
 could Bessie Carnahan be thinking of? \ 
 
 There was to be a dance that night, guests coming 
 over from the other places in the hills. He knew these 
 informal dances to be great fun; his spirits flew upward 
 and he was himself again after a most trying day. He 
 resolutely threw off the shadow of anxiety that had come 
 all the way up from town with him. Why look at the 
 dark side of life when there was a chance to see the 
 bright ? It was a philosophy that his mother herself 
 had taught, so why not put it into practice at this 
 very time ? He had his mother s own teachings behind 
 him. 
 
 Nevertheless, he found himself constantly beseiged by 
 the fear that a telegram might come at any moment. 
 
 The railway station and telegraph office was not far 
 from the Carnahan place. Twice during the evening a 
 messenger came over with despatches. Each time his 
 heart seemed to stand still with apprehension. But they 
 were not for him. One came to George Pennington and 
 the other to James Carnahan. 
 
 The former, gloomy faced and silent, was standing on 
 the porch when Carnahan came out of the little room 
 which he called his own. The financier was in fine 
 humour.
 
 [94] 
 
 OO J r I )r 
 
 "Good news, Colonel?" asked Pennington, putting 
 
 a bright look on his face. 
 
 "Splendid. The Henly Water and Power Company 
 has gone to smash. That leaves the field utterly in our 
 hands. I predicted it six weeks ago." Blynn had come 
 up at the beginning of the conversation. "You remem- 
 
 v \!\ i V^ v* ( 
 
 ber, Blynn, that I told you not to dabble in Henly stock. 
 We had them going from the first. Gad, the stock 
 holders in that concern won t get three cents on the 
 dollar. They ve partly protected the bonds, that s all." 
 
 Pennington s cold, keen gaze fell upon Sedgewick 
 Blynn, and rested there. The young man flushed but 
 manfully arose to the occasion. 
 
 "I m sorry, George," he said. "You don t blame 
 me, do you ? That stock looked as good as gold itself." 
 
 "It s all right, Sedgewick," was all the other said. 
 Blynn laughed uneasily as he walked away. Alone he 
 sauntered toward the distant gates, a prey not to con 
 trition but to annoyance. As he neared the gates, a 
 messenger from the telegraph office entered the grounds, 
 and, coming directly up to him, asked if a Mr. Blynn 
 was staying there. 
 
 Blynn s heart turned icy cold. 
 
 "Yes," he said numbly. 
 
 "Got a telegram for him. Where 11 I find him ?" 
 
 "I ll sign for it. He s busy." 
 
 The boy promptly surrendered the envelope and went 
 his way. 
 
 Sedgewick deliberately stuck the message into his
 
 [95] 
 
 I 
 
 pocket, the envelope unbroken, and, pulling his nerves 
 together, started toward the house. 
 
 Something told him clearly what the message contained 
 but he decided that he would not read it until the nex* 
 
 morning 
 
 No one would know ! 

 
 ^Ff $k_JfiT* 
 fr jcnwrr-i 
 4ii^J^ L-^i 
 
 
 & 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE INCONSIDERATE WORLD 
 
 CARNAHAN had a talk with his daughter late in 
 the night. She had been with Sedgewick Blynn 
 all evening, quite to the exclusion of other 
 guests. Her father was not slow to perceive the effect 
 this produced on little Beatrice Gray, for whom he had 
 a decided fondness. He resolved to speak plainly and 
 finally on the subject of Sedgewick Blynn. 
 
 They were alone in his smoking-room, whither she 
 always went to say good-night, or on the even more 
 frequent business of wheedling extravagant promises out 
 of him. 
 
 "You have no right, father, to say such horrid things 
 about Sedgewick and me," she cried after his first 
 vigorous remarks on the unseemly conduct of the two 
 young people. 
 
 "Right, my dear child?" he queried, raising his eye 
 brows in a way that seemed strangely new to her. "If 
 I have n t, then who has ? And now that I m at it, I shall 
 no longer mince matters in regard to Blynn. Sit down, 
 Bessie. Don t be afraid. I sha n t scold any more than 
 I have to, but we ll have it out before we go to bed."
 
 [97] 
 
 . 
 
 She sat down opposite him, staring at his set face with 
 wide, unbelieving eyes. 
 
 "I don t know what there really is between you and 
 Sedgewick. You ve never told me. In any event, it s 
 puppy love on your side perhaps, it s some sort of 
 infatuation. With him, it s nothing more or less than a 
 scheme to drop into a warm, luxurious berth for the rest 
 of his life. He s the sort of man who would induce a 
 girl to elope with him. Don t interrupt, please. He 
 knows that no sensible, self-respecting father would ever 
 give a daughter into his hands. It would be criminal 
 on the part " 
 
 "Oh, papa! You don t know what you re saying!" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do. Your dad is no fool, my child. I know 
 men of his stamp as I know my alphabet. The world is 
 full of em. Butterfly men ! Gad, what useless things 
 they are! Pretty to look at, that s all. Sedgewick is 
 the king of his kind. Perhaps you think you are in love 
 with him ; perhaps you feel that you are engaged to him. 
 It s barely possible that you have had some sort of a 
 dream that I ll permit you to marry him. But it s out 
 of the question. I d sooner see you married to a street 
 sweeper than to Sedgewick Blynn. The sweeper at 
 least is a toiler and he s usually honest. That s more 
 than can be said for Sedgewick Blynn." 
 
 "Father, you don t mean that!" 
 
 "Decidedly, I do. He s crooked. Shall I tell you 
 
 some of the things I know about him ?" 
 
 
 
 She looked dumbly into his eyes. Somehow she 
 ~*~.~* 7
 
 ea 
 
 [98] 
 
 beginning to feel as she did when awakening from a 
 sound sleep to find that her dream and the real world 
 were strangely confused one with the other. 
 
 He went on. " In the first place, unquestionably he 
 has deceived and robbed George Pennington. Just a 
 moment, please ! I know, and so does George Penning 
 ton. He likes the fellow and he won t say a word. He s 
 rich and his losses won t hurt him in that way. But he s 
 suffering because of the duplicity of his trusted friend. 
 Blynn has invested money for him from time to time, 
 always in uncertain schemes from which he derived large 
 commissions as a promoter, so to speak. One instance : 
 he sold Pennington fifty thousand shares of stock that 
 had been given to him personally on condition that he 
 placed another ten thousand at a given price. They 
 were in a zinc and copper mining concern that was 
 practically out of existence when Pennington bought a 
 hundred thousand shares at thirty cents each thirty 
 thousand dollars for a bunch of worthless paper that 
 had lain in Blynn s safe for months of which your 
 friend Mr. Blynn got fifteen thousand dollars in cold 
 cash. He knew when he sold these shares to George 
 Pennington that the whole lot of them were not worth 
 thirty cents. That s but one instance. I can almost 
 swear that he has cost Pennington nearly a quarter of 
 a million dollars in the past two or three months. If 
 you should ask Pennington whether he ever expects to 
 trust Blynn with another commission, I think you d 
 see him shake his head.
 
 ^i^^^^ri 
 
 [99 ] 
 
 "But all this is as nothing compared to one other 
 transaction of his. I don t like to tell it to you, my child, 
 but I must. The time for soft words has passed. You ll 
 be crying in a minute, but I can t help it. This scamp 
 has deliberately pilfered from his own mother!" 
 
 "No, no! He adores her!" 
 
 "I ll tell you the story. A few weeks ago Mrs. Blynn 
 came to my office to see me. I knew her husband and 
 loved him in the old days, and I also knew her. The 
 dear old lady, scarcely able to walk, came to see me 
 about some investments Sedgewick had made for her 
 eight or ten thousand dollars in all, I think. She was 
 worried. Investments that he had made on on " the 
 old man s teeth were set "on my advice, do you see ? " 
 
 "Then you I mean, he was not altogether to blame," 
 she had the daring to say. 
 
 His eyes snapped. "But as I had never given him a 
 word of advice in my life and knew nothing of his moth 
 er s investments, you can hardly say that, Bessie. Plainly, 
 my dear, he lied to her. He sunk her little fortune in 
 schemes of his own and set her mind at rest by telling 
 her that they were safe because / was behind them. 
 Now do you see ? The money s gone utterly lost to 
 her. What s more, my child, this despicable friend of 
 yours has absolutely impoverished the trusting old lady. 
 That s the kind of an adoring son he s been." 
 
 Neither spoke for a full minute. The girl s gaze never 
 left her father s eyes. She knew that he never lied to 
 her.
 
 "He may have been perfectly innocent in all this," she 
 murmured. 
 
 "Not perfectly innocent, for he told her that I advised 
 him." 
 
 "But you you could not have had the heart to ex- 
 
 . 
 pose him to his mother, father," she said, her lip trembling 
 
 "Are you pitying him or his mother?" 
 
 "It s all so very sudden so shocking," she answered, 
 twisting her fingers in and out. 
 
 "I am afraid that I blurted out enough in my surprise 
 to convince her that he had deceived her. I shall always 
 regret my stupidity. Good God, if you could have seen 
 her face when she began to realise. All I might say or 
 do after that unhappy break could not withdraw the iron 
 that had gone into her soul. She understood fully where 
 she had only suspected before, or I believe she half 
 suspected him. Too late I undertook to repair the 
 harm I had done " 
 
 "The harm you had done!" 
 
 "Yes I would not have given her that pain for 
 fifty times ten thousand dollars. I assumed to remember 
 the deal; I pleaded guilty to rank carelessness I did 
 even more than that. I assured her that her investments 
 were all right." 
 
 "You did that?" 
 
 "Yes. But she did not believe me. She seemed ten 
 years older when she left my office. There was not 
 much for her to say, but she thanked me. The next 
 day I had my secretary write her a palavering letter to 
 
 ^^ - ** 
 
 -^rT i,
 
 [ioi] 
 
 say that her stock was gilt edged and that I would be 
 glad to buy it back from her at par. Her daughter 
 answered the letter. She said that her mother was 
 most grateful, but that she preferred to keep the stock. 
 You must understand, my child, that the poor old lady 
 knew that there was no stock. Is n t it a pretty story ? " 
 
 "I can t believe that he would " she began, horror 
 in her eyes. 
 
 "We ll drop his business affairs," said her father, 
 drawing a long breath, "and take up his social gambling." 
 
 "Ah," she cried, her face brightening, "you can t say 
 anything against him socially." 
 
 "You ve heard people say that he is er or rather 
 was, carrying on rather recklessly with certain married 
 women I ll mention no names. Haven t you heard 
 of these stories ? Be quite honest." 
 
 "I ve heard them, of course. But, goodness, every 
 young man does that sort of thing nowadays, unless he s 
 too dreadfully poky to live. It s quite the thing," she 
 said, with conviction. Her father looked at her in dull 
 amazement. 
 
 "Great God!" he ejaculated. "You mean to tell 
 me that you you young girls look upon that sort of 
 thing with your eyes wide open and don t even blush ? " 
 
 "Pooh ! If we blushed every time we had the chance, 
 dad, we d soon look like birth-marks." 
 
 "Good Lord!" he gasped again. He was getting a 
 sharp lesson in worldliness and he did n t like it. For 
 a moment he stared helplessly and then mumbled: 
 
 f3_ 
 
 
 Ccv -
 
 r i 
 
 L J 
 
 "You ve known about these scandalous affairs all the 
 time and still stand out for him ? Well, I m I m 
 damned !" 
 
 But she was looking very serious; a perplexed frown 
 had succeeded the stare of distress. "I wouldn t have 
 thought it of him. He has always talked so beautifully 
 of his mother. You must be 
 
 "I ll bet my head his mother does n t know of his 
 of the affairs you condone. But never mind that. I see 
 that you re not even shocked. I thought you d be 
 petrified. Here s something, however, that may bowl 
 you over, my charming philosopher. He s engaged to 
 be married to Beatrice Gray." 
 
 "He s not!" she flared, leaping to her feet. "I know 
 that that isn t true!" 
 
 "I have her brother s word for it." 
 
 "Then he lied! I know they re not engaged," she 
 stormed. 
 
 Her father understood and he was a very wise man. 
 Instead of pressing the point, he quietly arose and, put 
 ting his arm about her waist, led her toward the stairs. 
 
 "It s getting late, my dear, and I know you ll want 
 to talk it over with Beatrice. I think he s pulled the 
 wool over two pairs of very beautiful eyes. I d have it 
 out with Beatrice before I went to sleep, if I were you. 
 You ll both feel much better. And then you can both 
 sympathise with him in the morning." 
 
 She sobbed spasmodically for a moment, and then, 
 her cheeks flaming, rushed frantically up-stairs, flying
 
 [io3] 
 
 down the hall to Miss Gray s room. Dashing in upon 
 her rival in this pretty contest, she plumped herself down 
 upon the bed, in which Beatrice was lazily reading. 
 
 "Are you engaged to Sedgewick Blynn?" she de 
 manded, without ceremony. 
 
 Miss Gray dropped her book. She gasped. 
 
 "I mean it!" went on Bessie sternly. "I m trying to 
 find out something about him." 
 
 "I should say you are!" exclaimed Beatrice. 
 
 "Well, are you?" insistently. 
 
 "Not just at present. Are you?" 
 
 "Were you ever ?" 
 
 "I asked: Are you?" 
 
 "That s what I m trying to find out. I don t know. 
 I thought I was." 
 
 "I thought I was, too, until until 
 
 "Until when ? Speak out ! I m not going to bite your 
 head off." 
 
 "Until this evening. I don t mind telling you that I 
 broke it off to-night. I hate and despise him. You may 
 have him. I don t want him." 
 
 "Oh, thank you kindly," scoffed Miss Carnahan. "I 
 was just going to offer him to you." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 They glared at each other for a moment and then 
 burst into uncontrollable laughter. An instant later 
 they were hysterically kissing one another and thanking 
 all the lucky stars in the universe that they had found out 
 the truth about Sedgewick Blynn. Each was amazed 
 
 ^ 
 
 n 

 
 
 to find that there were no heart pangs, after all; they 
 spoke of Sedgewick as if he were dead and buried. They 
 slept better that night than they had slept in weeks. 
 Sedgewick Blynn was off their minds. 
 
 He did not sleep well, however. He could not take his 
 mind from the telegram which remained sealed in his 
 pocket. A dreadful oppression, a sense of utter gloom 
 came over him. He wished now that he had read it 
 before or, more than that, he regretted that he had 
 left home. 
 
 Morning came, and he sallied forth, the telegram in 
 his pocket. He went toward the gates, ostensibly to 
 meet the messenger boy as if by accident. In one of the 
 driveways he came upon Bessie Carnahan and Beatrice 
 Gray, who, having slept together, were out for a before 
 breakfast stroll together. 
 
 The irrepressible Miss Carnahan confronted him, her 
 face beaming with malicious joy in contemplation of his 
 coming discomfiture. 
 
 "Now, here we are, Sedgewick," she said sweetly. 
 
 f 
 
 "Two pretty girls and both free. Take your pick. 
 
 Which will you have? A brunette or a blonde?" 
 
 J 
 
 He gulped and looked blankly from one to the other. 
 He understood. It required a mighty effort of the will 
 to hold himself together, but he succeeded. Into his 
 face came a depressed, anxious look; his eyes seemed 
 to express the fear that consumed him. Even in this 
 trying moment he was able to play on the heart-strings 
 of those who would have tormented him ; he deliberately 
 
 v.
 
 
 HT 
 
 ^N 
 Vi* ! 
 
 *^S=*Z** 
 
 [ 105] 
 
 turned his own miserable apprehensions to account, 
 dropping easily into the centre of the stage as any vain 
 glorious actor might have done. He said nothing until 
 he had drawn the telegram from his pocket. His hand 
 trembled as he passed it to the surprised Miss Carnahan. 
 
 "It just came," he said. "I m afraid to open it. My 
 mother s not been well. She was much better when I 
 left home. Still one always expects bad news. Won t 
 you please read it for me ?" 
 
 Bessie Carnahan s smile of derision vanished, just as 
 he had planned that it should. Apprehension and pity 
 succeeded in its place; she experienced a sudden sensa 
 tion of regret for her miserable levity. A sober, anxious 
 look also crept into Beatrice Gray s eyes. 
 
 The girl resolutely tore open the envelope and glanced 
 at the message. She turned deathly pale and her lip 
 trembled; tears rushed to her eyes; impulsively she 
 thrust the missive into the hands of Beatrice Gray. 
 
 "I can t oh, I can t tell him," she cried piteously. 
 Sedgewick Blynn knew then that the worst had hap 
 pened, but, despite all that, a thrill of exaltation swept 
 over him. He had played for and won sympathy where 
 scorn had been promised. Verily, he was master in his 
 own domain ! 
 
 He did not wait for Beatrice Gray to read the word 
 from Kate O Brien, but took the message from her un 
 resisting hand. They watched him as he read; they 
 saw the honest look of pain and despair steal into his 
 face; they saw his lips tremble and the tears rush to his 
 
 :v
 
 10. 
 
 f&- 
 
 [106] 
 
 eyes. With a piteous gesture to indicate his powerless- 
 ness to speak, he turned and walked slowly toward a 
 bench beneath the trees. Then, completely overcome 
 by their emotions, the two girls hastened to the house 
 with their blighting news. They could not find the cour 
 age to offer consolation in the face of that silent, manly 
 exhibition of grief. 
 
 Later on, he started for the city, crushed and shaken, 
 completely overwhelmed by the sorrow that had fallen 
 upon him. George Pennington would have accompanied 
 him, but he declined the proffer of company. He wanted 
 to be alone. Something had told him that Pennington, 
 as well as the others, had seen into his soul and in secret 
 despised him ; he felt sure that every one knew intuitively 
 that he had come away from home with the full knowl 
 edge that his mother was on her death-bed. 
 
 What he did not know, though he may have feared it 
 as a possibility, was the cruel fact that young Gately 
 had seen the telegram delivered to him the night before ! 
 
 He was barely out of the grounds on his way to the 
 station before every one in the party was in possession 
 of Gately s news. And then it was that Sedgewick Blynn 
 was forever damned in the hearts of his friends. No 
 word was too bitter in the storm of denunciation that 
 followed. When he left the gates below it was to step 
 out of the life he had loved, never to find his way back 
 into it again. 
 
 He went down into the city that sunny day wrapped 
 in the blackest mantle that shame and self-pity could 
 
 rni- 
 ,tvs%
 
 nf 
 
 Y 1 
 
 
 produce. As well as if it had been printed in letters a 
 mile high, he saw the verdict that had been rendered 
 against him. The world knew and it would not forgive ! 
 
 Bleak and desolate, he watched the mileposts speed 
 by, a thousand bitter thoughts accumulating in his brain, 
 the most insistent of which was the outraged feeling that 
 his mother had done him a great and unbelievable 
 wrong by dying while he was away ! She had no right 
 to bring this down upon him ! It was cruel, unbelievably 
 cruel ! What had he done to deserve this cruel blow 
 from one he had loved and stood by through all his 
 struggling years ! 
 
 The world and all that therein was had turned against 
 him even to the dead woman who lay there in his 
 home, a thing to cast mockery and obloquy upon him 
 even to the edge of the grave ! 
 
 A woman with a small, curiously inclined child a 
 girl of four sat in the seat ahead of him. For miles 
 the little one looked in silent wonder upon the face of 
 this sombre, haggard man behind, peering over the 
 back of the seat into his unseeing eyes. She would have 
 liked to be friendly. The woman s instinct in her little 
 breast told her that this man needed kind words and 
 sympathy. At last, her piping, timid little voice broke 
 through the reserve of miles. He heard her words and 
 replied, dully, almost harshly. 
 
 She said, with childish ingenuousness : 
 
 "I m just gettin over the chicken-pox." It was the 
 best that she could do. 
 
 Nrff-J 
 
 *{fy\ 
 
 *?7
 
 [io8] 
 
 He replied, without knowing what he said: "Did you 
 enjoy it?" The harsh twang in his voice silenced the 
 child; she shrank back and gave up the effort to befriend 
 him. But she still studied his face with wondering eyes. 
 
 As the train neared the city, he found himself suddenly 
 entertaining a wish that he might die at once and end it 
 all ! If he could but die then and there he would not 
 have to look upon the dead face of his mother; he could 
 escape the smile of love and longing that must have gone 
 out with her at the last the sweet, trusting smile that 
 had tried to wait for him to come back to it before it was 
 stilled in death. Suicide! He could end it all in a 
 moment s time ! A fall between the rushing cars ! No ! 
 No! He shrank back from his thoughts in a terror so 
 great that the child ahead turned to cling to her mother 
 in dire affright. Then he smiled wanly upon his little, 
 would-be friend. 
 
 The terror had passed; life was too sweet, after all. 
 
 A satirical smile deepened in his face. He was think 
 ing now of Mary Colbert s husband, who had com 
 mitted suicide. Colbert had been a polite man and 
 punctilious. The day that he shot himself, he calmly 
 wrote a letter of apology to Mrs. Trend, with whom he 
 and his wife were to dine that night. Sedgewick recalled 
 the historic words of that grim epistle. He wondered if 
 he could have done it. Colbert had written to say that 
 
 xbsP . 
 
 his "own unfortunate death would prevent Mr. and Mrs. 
 Colbert from accepting Mrs. Trend s kind invitation to 
 dinner, after all. Trusting that Mrs. Trend would not 
 
 J/7S! 
 
 3s v&
 
 > <!fs 
 
 ^2S*^oi&-*^ 
 iog] 
 
 be greatly inconvenienced by the lateness of this with 
 drawal," etc. Then he coolly shot himself. But every 
 body in town marvelled at the grim humour which must 
 have been his to the last. 
 
 And so Sedgewick came back to the house in Lombard 
 Avenue, and saw the smile on his dead mother s lips, 
 and wondered how it was that she could have been so 
 cruel as to die without saying good-bye to him and kissing 
 him before she went !
 
 
 
 S 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONTEMPLATING THE CHRYSALIS 
 
 EDGEWICK BLYNN went into the deepest, 
 most consistent mourning for his mother. His 
 sisters, forgiving him at the crucial moment in 
 their joint misery, were surprised by the steadfastness 
 which characterised his professed rejection of all things 
 worldly. They could hardly believe that this sober stay- 
 at-home was the same youth who had gone whirling with 
 the world of pleasure a few short months before. For 
 months after his mother s death he was never away from 
 home at night, nor would he have anything to do with 
 the world which had known him so long and so well. 
 He had calmly announced in the beginning that he could 
 not make room in his heart for the tender memory of a 
 mother and thoughts of the callous, sordid world as he 
 had come to know it. 
 
 He gave them to understand that he intended to cut 
 himself off from his old, heartless associates, whether 
 they liked it or not. But his sisters never were to know 
 of the bitterness that filled his heart as he looked the real 
 situation in the face. His world had renounced him ! It 
 gave him plainly to understand in a thousand little ways, 

 
 <n 
 [in] 
 
 by a hundred poignant snubs, that it was through with 
 him. He had run his course. But he firmly, resolutely 
 faced it all with a splendid foil pitiful, abject grief 
 over the loss of his mother. Those who came in contact 
 with him seldom failed to speak, in subdued tones, of 
 the remarkable and at the same time irreproachable 
 grief which had altered him so completely. 
 
 He eschewed every form of social pleasure; he re 
 signed from his clubs; he ate in obscure cafes ; he seemed 
 to be utterly overwhelmed by his bereavement. Certain 
 friends of the old days, callow chaps who could have 
 forgiven his verbally published shortcomings for the 
 sufficient reason that they did not have brains enough to 
 retain so much, undertook a movement to re-establish 
 him among those who had politely but effectually for 
 gotten him. The movement failed. Grief, however 
 picturesque and glorified, is not the sesame which opens 
 the way to the treasures of society. 
 
 For weeks after the funeral the city, or rather that 
 portion of the city which inhabits the society columns by 
 day and its own secret fastnesses by night, throbbed with 
 requiems for Sedgewick Blynn. Tales concerning him 
 spread like wildfire. He became the most execrated man 
 in town a social pariah. His world had found him 
 out, and after all his world was one that sets a certain 
 standard for the dwellers therein. He had dropped 
 below that standard. 
 
 After the first shock of realisation had been lessened 
 by time and calculation, Blynn permitted his hopes and 
 
 . 1 

 
 [112] 
 
 his spirits to venture forth on an expedition of inquiry. 
 He searched eagerly, feverishly, for the first faint signs 
 of friendliness among those who had cast him off. Both 
 his hopes and his spirits were soon drenched by the 
 chill damp of a no uncertain aversion. No one gave 
 him greeting, no one offered a hand by which he might 
 lift himself above the quicksands into which he had 
 
 ^"^ j^~^ i*~ ~ * ^tV 
 
 blindly wandered. They were quite content to see him 
 sink out of sight, as if he had never been there at all. 
 
 At first he could not fully appreciate the extent of his 
 fall from grace. Not until his former friends and advo 
 cates deliberately passed him by with not so much as a 
 nod of recognition was he able to grasp the bitter truth. 
 Women to whom he had played knight-errant, for whom 
 he had run the errands in the race for favour, now cut him 
 dead in public places. A dozen times had he started to 
 lift his hat to these erstwhile friends, only to have them 
 turn away from him with unmistakable repulsion in their 
 manner. 
 
 He was stunned at first, then ugly and resentful. To 
 
 to J 
 
 himself he said, a thousand times over, that he could tell 
 the world something about these very dames that would 
 cause it to sit up and gasp. He knew them well, or, at 
 Least, so he tried to convince himself. And yet, after 
 all, he was constrained to sink back powerless and impo 
 tent in the remembrance that he merely had played the 
 same game with them, and that it was a harmless, innocu 
 ous game after all the game called Experience. It 
 was a gay, a somewhat boisterous game when one came
 
 l^^^M^M^ 
 
 -^<S? _ o 
 
 [113] 
 
 to understand its crudities; the outside world never got 
 beyond coveting its delicate possibilities. The outside 
 world is vulgar. At least, so Sedgewick Blynn had always 
 argued. Now he considered it worse than vulgar: it 
 was stupid ! 
 
 It is charitable to say that he did not mistake the kind 
 ness of certain old friends at the time of the funeral. 
 George Pennington had served as one of the bearers and 
 so had James Carnahan. Many people in the upper world 
 slyly had sent flowers to the house in Lombard Avenue. 
 It was their final and secret tribute to the memory of 
 Sedgewick Blynn, not a tribute to his mother by any 
 manner of means. 
 
 The sisters of Sedgewick Blynn were touched by 
 these beautiful testimonials from the world to which 
 he, not they, belonged. 
 
 Kate O Brien was as deeply impressed; her opinion 
 of the smart set changed considerably at that time. 
 After all, its people were not such narrow, selfish crea 
 tures as she had come to believe them by contact. She 
 could not understand why they had sent flowers to the 
 bier of humble Mrs. Blynn, unless it was that in their 
 hearts there was a warmer spring than her own dealings 
 with them had led her to believe they possessed. She 
 had been permitted to view them at rather close range, 
 too, from her particular walk in life, it may be believed. 
 
 Shunned by the people he had served with almost 
 servile, obliging earnestness, Sedgewick Blynn, as we 
 have said before, shrank back beaten and cowed into 
 
 *L. *
 
 
 ["4] 
 
 the obscurity of a convenient grief. The world should 
 never know, by any sign from him, how the other thing 
 was biting into his soul. It was enough that he was 
 bereaved, and it was more than enough that he had 
 decided, once and for all, to abandon the useless, vacuous 
 life of fashion for the steady, toilsome existence of a real 
 spinner. 
 
 He got it all very straight from Mrs. Trend one day. 
 Determined to learn precisely how he stood with that 
 excellent leader, he accosted her in front of Swan s. 
 Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped into the 
 victoria beside her, and ruthlessly implored her to set 
 him straight with the world. She eyed him coldly, almost 
 admiringly. His confidence, his ingenuousness was 
 sublime. But he was beyond the pale. She could not 
 take him up again. Even her exalted position would 
 not be proof against the tempest of indignation that would 
 follow the effort. She was compelled to speak plainly 
 and without mercy. 
 
 "You ask why people cut you, why they do not invite 
 you to their homes, why you have been obliged to resign 
 from the clubs. Why should you ask, Mr. Blynn ? The 
 reason is even plainer to you than to any one else. I 11 
 be quite frank with you. I think it is best that you should 
 understand clearly that there is no chance for you to 
 ever regain the smallest foothold in society, or such of it 
 as you have known. You were one of the chosen young 
 men. You could have lived to the end of your days 
 among the elect, if you had shown yourself worthy. You 
 
 
 i 

 
 opyright, iyiu, Doild, Mead & Co. 
 
 "She was compelled to speak plainly and without mercy"
 
 
 ["5] 
 
 amused people, and that is saying a great deal in these 
 days. But you also abused them, which is more to the 
 point. To be perfectly plain, every one has come to regard 
 you not as a cad but as a man who never rightfully 
 belonged. No one can ever forget that you played your 
 mother false. If you would do that, you would play the 
 rest of us false. You knew that she was dying when you 
 no, you must listen to me ! when you left her bedside 
 that day. But you could not forego your own selfish 
 pleasure, even for that. You squandered her little fortune. 
 You inveigled a devoted though foolish friend into bad 
 speculations and you profited by his losses. You trifled 
 with two young girls more, perhaps and you would 
 have eloped with one of them. You see we know it all ! 
 It may interest you to know that we never took you 
 seriously. We are not so blind as all that. You were a 
 splendid ornament, a purchasable commodity. We did 
 not know it then, but now we are quite sure that we bought 
 you with kind words away from the mother who loved 
 you. It was a bad trade, Mr. Blynn. We meant nothing, 
 she was everything. You became a butterfly; you 
 snapped your shell and flew up among us. We admire 
 butterflies but we don t pin much faith to them. Now you 
 ask why I do not ask you to my house, quietly, you say, 
 for you are in mourning. I 11 answer that rather brutally, 
 Mr. Blynn, by asking you in return : for what, not whom, 
 are you in mourning?" 
 
 He looked hard into her cold, uncompromising eyes 
 for a moment, and then, with a short "Good-bye," whicn 

 
 [ii6] 
 
 was in reality his farewell to the world over which she 
 was queen, deliberately stepped out of the victoria 
 and went his bitter way. 
 
 And so he went down into his oblivion with a surly 
 heart and in bitter spirit. He turned to his sisters and 
 to Kate O Brien, and to the humble, unworldly people 
 of Lombard Avenue. To them he gravely descanted 
 upon the evils of society and forswore it to their faces 
 with such convincing vehemence that they believed him 
 to be a brand rescued from the burning. 
 
 And they delighted in listening to his vainglorious tales 
 of the upper world; he could open the secret recesses to 
 their wondering gaze, and they could see to the very 
 heart of the thing that he called Rottenness ! 
 
 Pennington had gone out of his life without a word 
 to cheer or encourage. He took himself off to Paris; 
 it was said by his friends that he fled because he was 
 afraid to run the risk of propinquity ! 
 
 Lombard Avenue discovered one day, to its surprise, 
 and we might say mortification, that Sedgewick Blynn 
 and Kate O Brien were to be married. Lombard Avenue 
 could not understand how it was that Sedgewick Blynn 
 could descend to its level in a matter of this kind; it 
 had always believed that he was cut out to be husband 
 to nothing less than the daughter of a banker, or perhaps 
 even the more ostentatious production of a millionaire 
 milliner. 
 
 Moreover, the Avenue was disturbed to learn that he 
 had given Up his office in the Street and was considering 
 

 
 
 a proposition to become city salesman for an automobile 
 concern, with hope beyond. His sisters, apparently in 
 a mood to seek surcease from grief and desolation, had 
 long since continued to find it, in a measure, by working 
 all day long in the office of the County Recorder. The 
 Avenue was very slow to see things. 
 
 Kate O Brien loved Sedgewick, but she was not so 
 dense as to overlook his faults, even though she loved 
 him blindly. She realised better than any one else just 
 what sort of a man he had been and what she would 
 have to contend with. Somehow she had a feeling that, 
 in time, she could refurbish him and teach him to live 
 "according to his lights." He cared for her in a way; 
 he cared as a beaten dog cares for the one whose hand 
 is gentle and whose voice is soft. She had been his friend 
 through all the years and she had not denied him by 
 look or word. He caught himself dreaming of the future; 
 he might be able to raise her to a social level equal to 
 that of the dyspepsia-tablet maker s wife, who was, : n a 
 way, one of the recognised forces in society, although it 
 was quite out of place for one to speak of the digestion 
 in her presence. Perhaps, as he went upward in the auto 
 mobile business or, more likely, the flying machine 
 industry he might hope to polish her into a social bril 
 liance such as even the wife of the omnibus company s 
 president could not surpass nor the great-granddaughter 
 of a Plymouth Rock merchant deny. 
 
 Kate was clever enough; all she lacked was the tone 
 that he could give to her. 
 
 
 f^f~ //V 
 
 fcv 
 
 " 
 
 s ? 
 
 1
 
 
 
 
 m K 
 
 [118] 
 
 Occasionally he took her to the play or to the vaude 
 ville. In return she had him to lunch at the Italian 
 restaurant in Bothwerk Street or took him to church 
 of a Sunday morning. 
 
 One night, just a week before the wedding, she tim 
 idly for she was still in some awe of his past prowess 
 broached a subject that had long been in her mind 
 to discuss with him, plainly and decisively. They had 
 just returned to her home after having witnessed a 
 comedy in one of the theatres. It was the first time in 
 more than a year that he had been inside this play 
 house, where on innumerable occasions he had sat with 
 gay box parties as one of the fortunate few at whom all 
 people stared. This night he sat beside pretty Kate 
 O Brien, head of the dressmaking department, in a seat 
 not far removed from the stage, his face set and his 
 eyes glued to the drop curtain or the open stage, as 
 the changes came. Around about them sat dozens of 
 people whom he knew. He was afraid to look at them. 
 Kate observed this; it was the thing that she was bring 
 ing herself to discuss with him. 
 
 "Look here, Sedge, were you ashamed to be seen 
 with me to-night ?" she found the courage to demand at 
 last. She was taking her hat off in the parlour. 
 
 He came out of his reverie. "Ashamed? What do 
 you mean, Kate ?" 
 
 "All of your fine friends were there. They did n t 
 seem to see you, and I noticed that you were n t rubber^ 
 jng very much in their direction. That s why I a.sk?d 
 
 f
 
 
 % 
 
 if you were well, were you afraid they would n t speak 
 to you if they saw you sitting there with me ? I m only 
 a working girl, you know. It " 
 
 He patted her hand reassuringly, even condescend 
 ingly. "Nonsense," he said. "You know better than 
 that. Am I not a working man these days ? Have n t 
 I cut it all out ? Ashamed of you, Kate ? I should 
 say not. You re worth all of em put together." 
 
 "I don t like your tone, Sedge. I m not a child, you 
 know. I can see a thing or two. Why did n t Mrs. 
 Osgood and Miss Perrin and Mrs. Ostertag speak to 
 you ? They looked right at you and and, well, they 
 turned away. I saw them do it. Look here, Sedge, 
 am I going to be the cause of your old friends never 
 speaking to you ? Are they always going to cut you 
 when they see us together ? If that s so I 11 give up 
 
 "They sha n t cut me, damn em," he cried viciously. 
 "I won t let them. I 11 make them sit up and take no 
 tice; just you watch me." Then catching himself up, 
 he swiftly returned to his attitude of tolerance. "Never 
 mind, Kate, if what you think should be true, it can t 
 make any difference. They can t change me, not by a 
 long shot. You re good enough for me, so there s the 
 end of it." 
 
 "But will you always think that way?" she insisted, 
 almost pleadingly. "Won t you feel it after a while 
 when they when they keep on failing to see you 
 when you re with me ? And, more than that, pretty 
 soon they 11 quit seeing you when you re not with me.
 
 <n 
 
 Oh, I know ! I know that a man can t be on the fence 
 with these people. He s got to get down on one side 
 or the other. If he gets down on the side they don t 
 care about, he s out of it forever, so far as they are 
 concerned." 
 
 "Haven t I told you a hundred times that I don t 
 give a damn what they think ?" he cried irascibly. "I ve 
 got down on your side of the fence, so what s the row, 
 dear ? I knew what I was doing. I wanted you, and 
 I want to live quietly and happily, not in that awful 
 roar I ve been used to. I ve told er a dozen 
 women that I m going to marry you." 
 
 "You have, dear? What did they say?" with eager 
 curiosity. 
 
 "Say? What could they say?" he stammered, real 
 ising that he had lied to some disadvantage. 
 
 "I ll bet they laughed at you and turned up their 
 noses," she said, her cheeks flaming. 
 
 "Now, let s talk about something else," he exclaimed, 
 palpably evasive. He was mean enough to let it stand 
 that she should know, then and there, that he was sacri 
 ficing his whole social career for her. 
 
 "But I m thinking of you, Sedgewick, dear," she 
 cried earnestly. "Think now, before it is too late. 
 They won t speak to me, except in the shop. You 11 
 be cutting yourself off altogether " 
 
 "My dear, that s what they ve all told me," he said, 
 with fine defiance in his eyes. He arose and put his 
 arm about her shoulders.
 
 [121] 
 
 "They have ?" she faltered. 
 
 His eyes flashed. "Yes. They said I d be ruining 
 my career and all that. I 11 be perfectly frank with 
 you, Kate. That s what they said. They begged me 
 to give it all up and er and come back into the 
 old playground, but now I want you to believe this 
 forever more I politely told em that I cared more for 
 your little finger than I did for the whole darned universe." 
 
 She was crying on his shoulder. It inspired him to 
 more heroic utterances. He added vehemently: "And 
 that s no lie, either!" 
 
 After the marriage, a week later, the happy bride 
 looked slyly but in vain through the society columns 
 of the daily press for notices of the wedding. 
 
 THE END 
 
 t^- < 
 
 si S3 mi 

 
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