My acquaintance was now extending rapidly. I had discovered in the turgid tide that swept through the streets of the city other conditions and moods than those I first remarked: dark brooding shadows and rushing rapids catching the light, but fierce and deadly beneath; placid pools and sequestered eddies, far apart where the sunlight sifted in and lay soft on the drift that had escaped the flood, touching it with its magic and lending it its sweet radiance. I had found, indeed, that the city was an epitome of the world. It took a great many people to make it and there were other classes in it besides the rich and the poor. It was in one of these classes that I was beginning to find myself most at home.

I received one day an invitation to dine one evening the following week at the house of a gentleman whom I had met a week or two before and whom I had called on in response to an invitation unusually cordial. I had not been to a fashionable dinner since I had come to the West, and I looked forward with some curiosity to the company whom I should meet at Mr. Desport's, for I knew nothing about him except that I had met him in a law case and we had appeared to have a number of things in common, including objects of dislike, and further, that when I called on him he lived in a very handsome house, and I was received in one of the most charming libraries it was ever my good fortune to enter, and with a graciousness on the part of his wife which I had never known excelled. It was like stepping into another world to pass from the rush of the city into that atmosphere of refinement and culture.

My heart, however, was a little lower down than it should have been, for I could not but reflect with how much more pleasure I would have arrayed myself if it had been an invitation to Mr. Leigh's. In truth, the transition from my narrow quarters and the poverty of those among whom I had been living for some time, made this charming house appear to me the acme of luxury, and I was conscious of a sudden feeling, as I passed this evening through the ample and dignified hall into the sumptuous drawing-room, that somehow I was well fitted for such surroundings. Certainly I found them greatly to my taste. I was received again most graciously by Mrs. Desport, and as I had followed my provincial custom of coming a little ahead of time, I was the first visitor to arrive, a fact which I did not regret, as Mrs. Desport took occasion to tell me something of the guests whom she expected. After describing what I concluded to be a somewhat staid and elderly company, she added:

"I have given you a young lady whom I feel sure you will like. She is a little serious-minded, I think, and some people consider that she is simply posing; but however eccentric she may be, I believe that she is really in earnest, and so does my husband; and I have never seen a young girl improve so much as she has done since she took up this new work of hers."

What this work was I was prevented from inquiring by the arrival of a number of guests all at once.

A dinner where the guests are not presented to each other differs in no important sense from a table-d'hÔte dinner. The soup is likely to be a trifle colder and the guests a trifle more reserved—that is all. Mrs. Desport, however, followed the old-fashioned custom of introducing her guests to each other, preferring to open the way for them to feel at home, rather than to leave them floundering among inanities about the weather and their taste for opera. And though a lady, whom I presently sat next to, informed me that they did not do it "in England or even in New York now," I was duly grateful.

Having been presented to the company, I found them gay and full of animation, even though their conversation was inclined to be mainly personal and related almost exclusively to people with whom, for the most part, I had no acquaintance. The name of young Canter figured rather more extensively in it than was pleasant to me, and Dr. Capon was handled with somewhat less dignity than the cloth might have been supposed to require. I was, however, just beginning to enjoy myself when my attention was suddenly diverted by the sound of a voice behind me, as another guest arrived. I did not even need to turn to recognize Eleanor Leigh, but when I moved around sufficiently to take a side glance at her, I was wholly unprepared for the vision before me. I seemed to have forgotten how charming she looked, and she broke on me like a fresh dawn after a storm. I do not know what I was thinking, or whether I was not merely just feeling, when my hostess came forward.

"Now we are all here. Mr. Glave, you are to take Miss Leigh in. You know her, I believe?"

I felt myself red and pale by turns and, glancing at Miss Leigh, saw that she, too, was embarrassed. I was about to stammer something when my hostess moved away, and as it appeared that the others had all paired off, there was nothing for me to do but accept the situation. As I walked over and bowed, I said in a low tone:

"I hope you will understand that I had no part in this. I did not know."

She evidently heard, for she made a slight bow and then drew herself up and took my arm.

"I should not have come," I added, "had I known of this. However, I suppose it is necessary that we should at least appear to be exchanging with ordinary interest the ordinary inanities of such an occasion."

She bowed, and then after a moment's silence added:

"I have nothing to say which could possibly interest you, and suggest that we do what I have heard has been done under similar circumstances, and simply count."

I thought of the molten metal pourable down an offender's throat. And with the thought came another: Did it mean that she was going to marry that young Canter? It was as if one who had entered Eden and discovered Eve, had suddenly found the serpent coiling himself between them.

"Very well." I was now really angry. I had hoped up to this time that some means for reconciliation might be found, but this dashed my hope. I felt that I was the aggrieved person, and I determined to prove to her that I would make no concession. I was not her slave. "Very well, then—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—nine, ten, eleven, twelve—thirteen," I said, looking straight ahead of me and dropping every syllable as if it were an oath. She gave me a barely perceptible side glance. I think I had taken her aback by my prompt compliance. She hesitated a moment.

"Or, as that is not very amusing, suppose we cap verses? I hear you know a great deal of poetry—Mr. Wolffert told me. I never knew any one with such a memory as his." I recognized the suggestion as a flag of truce.

I bowed, and as, of course, "Mary had a little lamb," was the first thing that popped into my head with its hint of personal application, I foolishly quoted the first verse, intending her to make the personal application.

She was prompt to continue it, with, I thought, a little sub-tone of mischief in her voice:

she said demurely. There she stopped, so I took up the challenge.

It was a silly and inept ending, I knew as soon as I had finished—still, it conveyed my meaning.

She paused a moment and evidently started to look at me, but as evidently she thought better of it. She, however, murmured, "I thought we would quote verses, not make them."

I took this to be a confession that she was not able to make them, and I determined to show how much cleverer I was; so, without noticing the cut of the eye which told of her wavering, I launched out:

To this she responded with a promptness which surprised me:

I felt that I must be equal to the situation, so I began rapidly:

"Than under her ire," I repeated to myself. "Than under the ire"—what the dickens will rhyme with "wilt less"? We had reached the dining-room by this time and I could see that she was waiting with a provoking expression of satisfaction on her face over my having stalled in my attempt at a rhyme. I placed her in her chair and, as I took my own seat, a rhyme came to me—a poor one, but yet a rhyme:

I said calmly as I seated myself, quite as if it had come easily.

"I was wondering how you'd get out of that," she said with a little smile which dimpled her cheek beguilingly. "You know you might have said,

or even,

Either would have made quite as good a rhyme and sense, too."

I did not dare let her see how true I thought this. It would never do to let her make fun of me. So I kept my serious air.

I determined to try a new tack and surprise her. I had a few shreds of Italian left from a time when I had studied the poets as a refuge from the desert dulness of my college course, and now having, in a pause, recalled the lines, I dropped, as though quite naturally, Dante's immortal wail:

I felt sure that this would at least impress her with my culture, while if by any chance she knew the lines, which I did not apprehend, it would impress her all the more and might prove a step toward a reconciliation.

For a moment she said nothing, then she asked quietly, "How does the rest of it go?"

She had me there, for I did not know the rest of the quotation.

she said with a cut of her eye, and a liquid tone that satisfied me I had, as the saying runs, "stepped from the frying-pan into the fire."

She glanced at me with a smile in her eyes that reminded me, through I know not what subtle influence, of Spring, but as I was unresponsive she could not tell whether I was in earnest or was jesting.

I relapsed into silence and took my soup, feeling that I was getting decidedly the worst of it, when I heard her murmuring so softly as almost to appear speaking to herself:

I glanced at her to find her eyes downcast, but a beguiling little dimple was flickering near the corners of her mouth and her long lashes caught me all anew. My heart gave a leap. It happened that I knew my Alice much better than my Dante, so when she said, "You can talk, can't you?" I answered quietly, and quite as if it were natural to speak in verse:

She gave a little subdued gurgle of laughter as she took up the next verse:

I hoped that she was embarrassed when I found that she had taken my napkin by mistake, and she was undoubtedly so when she discovered that she had it.

"I beg your pardon," she said as she handed me hers.

I bowed.

With that, seeing my chance, I turned and spoke to the lady on my other side, with whom I was soon in an animated discussion, but my attention was not so engrossed by her that I did not get secret enjoyment out of the fact when I discovered that the elderly man on the other side of Miss Leigh was as deaf as a post and that she had to repeat every word that she said to him.

The lady on the other side of me was rambling on about something, but just what, I had not the least idea (except that it related to the problem-novel, a form of literature that I detest), as I was soon quite engrossed in listening to the conversation between Eleanor Leigh and her deaf companion, in which my name, which appeared to have caught the gentleman's attention, was figuring to some extent.

"Any relation to my old friend, Henry Glave?" I heard him ask in what he doubtless imagined to be a whisper.

"Yes, I think so," said Miss Leigh.

"You say he is not?"

"No, I did not say so; I think he is."

"He is a fine lawyer," I heard him say, and I was just pluming myself on the rapid extension of my reputation, when he added, "He is an old friend of your father's, I know. I was glad to hear he had come up to represent your father in his case against those rascals.—A friend of yours, too," were the next words I heard, for decency required me to appear to be giving some attention to my other neighbor, whom I devoutly wished in Ballyhac, so I was trying resolutely, though with but indifferent success, to keep my attention on the story she was telling about some one whom, like Charles Lamb, I did not know, but was ready to damn at a venture.

"He told me he came on your account, as much as on your father's," said the gentleman, rallyingly. "You had better look out. These old bachelors are very susceptible. No fool like an old fool, you know."

To this Miss Eleanor made some laughing reply, from which I gathered that her neighbor was a bachelor himself, for he answered in the high key which he mistook for a whisper:

"You had better not say that to me, for if you do, I'll ask you to marry me before the dessert."

I was recalled to myself by my other neighbor, who had been talking steadily, asking me suddenly, and in a tone which showed she demanded an answer:

"What do you think of that?"

"Why, I think it was quite natural," I said.

"You do?"

"Yes, I do," I declared firmly.

"You think it was natural for him to run off with his own daughter-in-law!" Her eyes were wide with astonishment.

"Well, not precisely natural, but—under the circumstances, you see, it was certainly more natural than for him to run off with his mother-in-law—you will have to admit that."

"I admit nothing of the kind," she declared, with some heat. "I am a mother-in-law myself, and I must say I think the jibes at mothers-in-law are very uncalled for."

"Oh! now you put me out of court," I said. "I did not mean to be personal. Of course, there are mothers-in-law and mothers-in-law."

Happily, at this moment the gentleman on her other side insisted on securing her attention, and I turned just in time to catch the dimples of amusement that were playing in Eleanor Leigh's face. She had evidently heard my mistake.

"Oh! he is so deaf!" she murmured, half turning to me, though I was not quite sure that she was not speaking to herself. The next second she settled the question. "He is so distressingly deaf," she repeated in an undertone, with the faintest accent of appeal for sympathy in her voice. I again recognized the flag of truce. But I replied calmly:

The color mantled in her cheek and she raised her head slightly.

"Are you going to keep that up? I suppose we shall have to talk a little. I think we are attracting attention. For Heaven's sake, don't speak so loud! We are being observed."

But I continued:

"It is very rude of you to go on in that way when I am speaking. You remind me of a machine," she smiled. "Here am I stuck between two men, one of whom cannot hear a word I say, while the other does nothing but run on like a machine." I observed, with deep content, that she was becoming exasperated.

At that moment the hostess leant forward and said:

"What are you two so interested in discussing there? I have been watching, and you have not stopped a minute."

Eleanor Leigh burst into a laugh. "Mr. Glave is talking Arabic to me."

"Arabic!" exclaimed the hostess. "Mr. Glave, you have been in the East, have you?"

"Yes, he came from the East where the wise men always come from," said Miss Leigh. Then turning to me she said in an undertone, "You see what I told you."

For reply, I simply quoted on, though I had a little pang as I saw the shadow come into her eyes and the smile leave her mouth.

"I think that was a very good occupation for you," she said, turning away, with her head very high.

"Will you let me say something to you?" she said in a low tone a moment later, and, without waiting, she added:

"I think it was rather nasty in me to say what I said to you when you first came in, but you had treated me so rudely when I spoke to you on the street."

"You do not call it rude not to answer a letter when a gentleman writes to explain an unfortunate mistake, and then cut him publicly?"

"I did not receive it until afterward," she said. "I was away from town, and as to cutting you—I don't know what you are talking about."

"At the Charity Fair."

"I never saw you. I wondered you were not there."

Had the earth opened, I could not have felt more astounded, and had it opened near me I should possibly have sprung in in my confusion. I had, as usual, simply made a fool of myself, and what to do I scarcely knew. At this instant the hostess arose, and the dinner was over and with it I feared my chance was over too.

"Give me a moment. I must have one moment," I said as she passed me on her way out of the dining-room with the other ladies, her head held very high.

She inclined her head and said something in so low a tone that I did not catch it.

King James I. never detested tobacco as I did those cigars smoked that evening. When, at last, the host moved to return to the drawing-room, I bolted in only to be seized on by my hostess and presented to a middle-aged and waistless lady who wanted to ask me about the Pooles, whom she had heard I knew. She had heard that Lilian Poole had not married very happily. "Did I know?"

"No, I did not know," nor, in fact, did I care, though I could not say so. Then another question: "Could I tell why all the men appeared to find Miss Leigh so very attractive?" Yes, I thought I could tell that—"Because she is very attractive."

"Oh well, yes, I suppose she is—pretty and all that, with a sort of kitteny softness—but——"

"There is no 'but' about it," I interrupted brusquely—"she is just what you said—very attractive. For one thing, she has brains; for another, heart. Neither of them is so common as not to be attractive." I thought of the young tigress concealed in that "kitteny softness" of which the lady spoke, and was determined not to permit the sly cat to see what I really felt.

"Of course, you know that she is going to marry Mr. Canter? He is the best parti in town."

"Of course, I do not know anything of the kind," I said bowing. "Since I had the honor of sitting by her I am thinking of marrying her myself."

"I know it. They all fall at the first encounter!" exclaimed the lady, and I saw she had no humor, and decided to hedge. "I only mean that I do not believe Miss Leigh would marry Mr. Canter or any one else for his money, or for any other reason except the best."

Finally, having escaped from her, I was just making my way toward Miss Leigh, who had been standing up talking to two men who on entering the room had promptly sought her out, when a servant entered and spoke to the hostess, who immediately crossed over and gave his message to Miss Leigh. "Mr. James Canter has called for you; must you go?"

"Yes, I fear I must." So with hardly a glance at me she passed out, leaving the room so dark that I thought the lights had been dimmed, but I discovered that it was only that Miss Eleanor Leigh had left. I could not in decency leave at once, though I confess the place had lost its charm for me, especially since I learned that Miss Leigh's escort for the ball was Mr. James Canter. I had other reasons than jealousy for preferring that he should not be Eleanor Leigh's escort. In my meditations that night as I walked the streets, Mr. James Canter held a somewhat conspicuous place.

James Canter was possibly the most attentive of all the beaux Miss Leigh had, and they were more numerous than I at that time had any idea of. He was prospectively among the wealthiest young men in the city, for his father, who idolized him, was one of the largest capitalists in the State. He was, as the stout lady had said, certainly esteemed by ambitious mammas among the most advantageous partis the city could boast of. And he was of all, without doubt, the most talked of. Moreover, he had many friends, was lavish in the expenditure of his money beyond the dream of extravagance, and what was called, not without some reason, a good fellow. Before I met him I had already had a glimpse of him as he "bucked" against his rival, Count Pushkin, on the night when, dejected and desperate, I, in a fit of weakness, went into the gambling-house determined to stake my last dollar on the turn of the wheel, and the sight of Pushkin saved me. But it was after I met him that I came to know what the pampered young man was. I was beginning now to be thrown with some of the lawyers and this had led to further acquaintances, among them young Canter. At first, I rather liked him personally, for he was against Pushkin and his gay manner was attractive. He was good-looking enough after the fleshly kind—a big, round, blondish man, only he was too fat and at twenty-eight had the waist and jowl of a man of forty who had had too many dinners and drunk too much champagne. But when I came to know him I could not see that he had a shred of principle of any kind whatsoever. His reputation among his friends was that had he applied himself to business, he would have made a reputation equal to his father's, which was that of a shrewd, far-sighted, cool-headed man of business who could "see a dollar as far as the best of them," but that he was squandering his talents in sowing a crop of wild oats so plentiful that it was likely to make a hole even in his father's accumulated millions, and its reaping might be anywhere between the poor-house and the grave. I knew nothing of this at the time, and after I came to know him as I did later, my judgment of him took form from the fact that I discovered he not only did not tell the truth, but had lost the power even to recognize it. Still, I think my real appraisement of him came when I discovered that he was paying assiduous attentions to Miss Leigh. I could not help remarking the frequency with which I found his name in juxtaposition with hers in the published accounts of social functions, where "Mr. Canter led the cotillion with Miss Leigh," or "Mr. Canter drove his coach with Miss Leigh on the box seat," etc., etc., and as my acquaintance began to extend among the young men about town, I heard more than occasional conjectures as to their future. It appeared to be accepted rather as a matter of course that the result lay entirely with the young man. It was a view that I fiercely rejected in my heart, but I could say nothing beyond a repudiation of such a view in general.

In view of my knowledge of Mr. Canter, it was natural enough that I should be enraged to find him the escort of Eleanor Leigh, and I fear my temper rather showed itself in the conversation which took place and which soon became general, partly because of the earnestness with which I expressed my views on the next subject that came up. The two or three young girls of the company had left at the same time with Miss Leigh, and the ladies who remained were, for the most part, married women of that indefinite age which follows youth after a longer or shorter interval. They had all travelled and seen a good deal of the world, and they knew a good deal of it; at least, some of them did and they thought that they knew more than they actually did know.

They agreed with more unanimity than they had yet shown on any subject that America was hopelessly bourgeois. Listening to them, I rather agreed with them.

"Take our literature, our stage, our novels," said one, a blonde lady of some thirty-five years, though she would, possibly, have repudiated a lustrum and a half of the measure.

"You differentiate the literature and the novels?" I interrupted.

"Yes. I might—but—I mean the lot. How provincial they are!"

"Yes, they appear so. Well?"

"They do not dare to discuss anything large and vital."

"Oh! yes, they dare. They are daring enough, but they don't know how—they are stupid."

"No, they are afraid."

"Afraid? Of what?"

"Of public opinion—of the bourgeois so-called virtue of the middle class who control everything."

"That is the only valid argument I ever heard in favor of the bourgeois," I said.

"What do you mean? Don't you agree with me?"

"I certainly do not. I may not seek virtue and ensue it; but at least I revere it."

"Do you mean that you think we should not write or talk of anything—forbidden?"

"That depends on what you mean by forbidden. If you mean——"

"I think there should be no subject forbidden," interrupted the lady by whom I had sat at table, a stout and tightly laced person of some forty summers. "Why shouldn't I talk of any subject I please?" She seemed to appeal to me, so I answered her.

"I do not at this instant think of any reason except that it might not be decent."

This raised an uncertain sort of laugh and appeared for a moment to stagger her; but she was game, and rallied.

"I know—that is the answer I always get."

"Because it is the natural answer."

"But I want to know why? Why is it indecent?"

"Simply because it is. Indecent means unseemly. Your sex were slaves, they were weaker physically, less robust; they were made beasts of burden, were beaten and made slaves. Then men, for their own pleasure, lifted them up a little and paid court to them, and finally the idea and age of chivalry came—based on the high Christian morality. You were placed on a pinnacle. Men loved and fought for your favor and made it the guerdon of their highest emprise, guarded you with a mist of adoration, gave you a halo, worshipped you as something cleaner and better and purer than themselves; built up a wall of division and protection for you. Why should you go and cast it down, fling it away, and come down in the mire and dust and dirt?"

"But I don't want to be adored—set up on a pedestal."

"Then you probably will not be," interrupted my deaf neighbor.

"I want to be treated as an equal—as an—an—intelligent being."

"I should think that would depend on yourself. I do not quite understand whom you wish to be the equal of—of men? Men are a very large class—some are very low indeed."

"Oh! You know what I mean—of course, I don't mean that sort."

"You mean gentlemen?"

"Certainly."

"Then I assure you you cannot discuss indecent subjects in mixed company; gentlemen never do. Nor write coarse books—gentlemen never do nowadays—nor discuss them either."

"Do you mean to say that great novelists never discuss such questions?" she demanded triumphantly.

"No, but it is all in the manner—the motive. I have no objection to the matter—generally, provided it be properly handled—but the obvious intention—the rank indecentness of it. See how Scott or George Eliot, or Tolstoi or TurgÉnieff, or, later on, even Zola, handles such vital themes. How different their motive from the reeking putrescence of the so-called problem-novel."

"Oh! dear! they must be very bad indeed!" exclaimed a lady, shocked by the sound of my adjectives.

"They are," suddenly put in my oldest neighbor, who had been listening intently with his hand behind his ear, "only you ladies don't know how bad they are or you would not discuss them with men."

This closed the discussion and a group of ladies near me suddenly branched off into another subject and one which interested me more than the discussion of such literature as the trash which goes by the name of the problem novel.

"Who is Eleanor Leigh in love with?" asked some one irrelevantly—a Mrs. Arrow—whose mind appeared much given to dwelling on such problems. She addressed the company generally, and possibly my former neighbor at the table in particular.

"Is she in love?" asked another.

"Certainly, I never saw any one so changed. Why, she has been moping so I scarcely know her—and she has taken to charity. That's a sure sign. I think it must be that young preacher she talks so much about."

"Well, I don't know who she is in love with," said the lady who had sat next to me at dinner, "but I know who she is going to marry. She is going to marry Jim Canter. Her aunt has made that match."

"Oh! do you think so?" demanded our hostess, who had joined the group. "I don't believe she will marry any one she is not in love with, and I can't believe she is in love with that fat, coarse, dissipated creature. He is simply repulsive to me."

I began to conceive an even higher opinion of my hostess than I had already had.

"I don't think it is anybody," continued our hostess.

"Oh! yes, you do—you think it is Doctor Capon."

"Doctor Capon! It is much more likely to be Mr. Marvel."

"Mr. Marvel! Who is he?—Oh, yes, the young preacher who turned Jew and was put out of his church. I remember now."

"Is Mr. Marvel a Jew?" I inquired. "Oh! yes, indeed, and a terrible Socialist."

"Ah, I did not know that."

"I heard she was going to marry a Jew," interjected another lady corroboratively, "but I must say it looks very much like Mr. Canter to me."

"Oh! she wouldn't marry a Jew?" suggested Mrs. Arrow. "I heard there was a young lawyer or something."

"She would if she'd a mind to," said our hostess.

"I still stand by Doctor Capon," declared Mrs. Arrow. "He is so refined."

"And I by Jim Canter—I thought at one time it was Count Pushkin; but since Milly McSheen has taken him away, the other seems to be the winning card. I must say I think the count would have been the better match of the two."

"I don't think that," exclaimed the other lady. "And neither would you, if you knew him."

"Possibly, she knows the other," I suggested.

"Oh! no—you see she could get rid of the count, if he proved too objectionable, and then she would still have the title."

"I never heard a more infamous proposal," I said in an aside to our hostess. She laughed. "No, did you—but she was only jesting——"

"Not she!" I was in no mood to tolerate jesting on the subject of Eleanor Leigh's marriage. My aside to our hostess drew the attention of the others to me, and Mrs. Arrow suddenly said, "Mr. Glave, which would you say? You know them both, don't you?"

"I do."

"Well, which would you say?"

"Neither," said I. I wanted to add that I would cheerfully murder them both before I would allow either of them to destroy Eleanor Leigh's life; but I contented myself with my brief reply.

"Oh! Mr. Glave is evidently one of her victims," laughed our hostess, for which I was grateful to her.

I came away from my friend's with the heroic determination to prevent Miss Leigh's life from being ruined and to accomplish this by the satisfactory method of capturing her myself. My resolve was a little dampened by reading in a newspaper next day the headlines announcing an "Important Engagement," which though no names were used pointed clearly at Miss Leigh and the hopeful heir and partner of Mr. James Canter, Sr. Reading carefully the article, I found that the engagement was only believed to exist. I felt like a reprieved criminal.

He who has not felt the pangs of a consuming passion has no conception of the true significance of life. The dull, cold, indifferent lover knows nothing of the half-ecstatic anguish of the true lover or the wholly divine joy of reconciliation even in anticipation. As well may the frozen pole dream of the sun-bathed tropic. It was this joy that I hugged in my heart even in face of the declaration of her expected engagement.

Next day I was talking to two or three young fellows when Canter and some episode in which he had figured as rather more defiant than usual of public opinion, came up, and one of them said to another, a friend of his and an acquaintance of mine, "What is Jim going to do when he gets married? He'll have to give up his 'friends' then. He can't be running two establishments."

"Oh! Jim ain't going to get married. He's just fooling around."

"Bet you—the old man's wild for it."

"Bet you—not now. He can't. Why, that woman—"

"Oh! he can pension her off."

"Her?—which her?"

"Well, all of 'em. If he don't get married soon, he won't be fit to marry."

It was here that I entered the conversation. They had not mentioned any name—they had been too gentlemanly to do so. But I knew whom they had in mind, and I was inwardly burning.

"He isn't fit to marry now," I said suddenly.

"What!" They both turned to me in surprise.

"No man who professes to be in love with any good woman," I said, "and lives as he lives is fit for any woman to marry. I am speaking generally," I added, to guard against the suspicion that I knew whom they referred to. "I know Mr. Canter but slightly; but what I say applies to him too."

"Oh! you'd cut out a good many," laughed one of the young men with a glance at his friend.

"No, gentlemen, I stand on my proposition. The man who is making love to a pure woman with a harlot's kisses on his lips is not worthy of either. He ought to be shot."

"There'd be a pretty big exodus if your views were carried out," said one of them.

"Well, I don't want to pose as any saint. I am no better than some other men; but, at least, I have some claim to decency, and that is fundamental. Your two-establishment gentry are no more nor less than a lot of thorough-paced blackguards."

They appeared to be somewhat impressed by my earnestness, even though they laughed at it. "There are a good many of them," they said. "Your friends, the Socialists——"

"Yes. I know. The ultra-Socialist's views I reprobate, but, at least, he is sincere. He is against any formal hard and fast contract, and his motive is, however erroneous, understandable. He believes it would result in an uplift—in an increase of happiness for all. He is, of course, hopelessly wrong. But here is a man who is debasing himself and others—all others—and, above all, the one he is pretending to exalt above all. I say he is a low-down scoundrel to do it. He is prostituting the highest sentiment man has ever imagined."

"Well, at any rate, you are vehement," said one.

"You've cut Jim out," said the other.

The conversation took place in a sort of lounging-room adjoining a down-town cafÉ frequented by young men. At this moment who should walk in but Mr. James Canter himself. The talk ceased as suddenly as cut-off steam, and when one of the young men after an awkward silence made a foolish remark about the fine day, which was in reality rainy and cold, Canter's curiosity was naturally excited.

"What were you fellows talking about? Women?"

"No," said one of the others—"nothing particular."

"Yes!" I said, "we were—talking about women."

"Whose women?"

"Yours." I looked him steadily in the eye.

He started, but recovered himself.

"Which of 'em?" he inquired as he flung himself into a chair and looked around for a match for the cigarette which he took from a jewel-studded gold case. "I am rather well endowed with them at present. What were you saying?"

I repeated my remark about the two-establishment gentry. His face flushed angrily; but my steady eye held him in check and he took a long, inhaling breath.

"Well, I don't give a blank what you think about it, or anything else." He expelled the smoke from his lungs.

"Perhaps—but that does not affect the principle. It stands. You may not care about the Rock of Gibraltar; but it stands and is the key to the situation."

He was in a livid rage, and I was prepared for the attack which I expected him to make; but he restrained himself. His forte was insolence.

"You teach Sunday-school, don't you?"

I thought this was a reference to one whose name I did not mean his lips to sully, and I determined to forestall him.

"I do," I said quietly. "I teach for Mr. Marvel."

"I know—the psalm-singing parson who has made all that trouble in this town—he and his Jew partner. We are going to break them up."

"Both are men whose shoes you are not fit to clean; and as to making trouble, the trouble was made by those a good deal nearer you than John Marvel—your precious firm and your side-partners—Coll McSheen and David Wringman."

"Well, you'd better confine your labors to your dirty Jews and not try to interfere in the affairs of gentlemen."

"As to the latter, I never interfere in the affairs of gentlemen, and as to the dirty Jews, I assure you they are not as dirty as you are; for their dirt is all outside while yours is within."

I had supposed he would resent this, but he had his reasons for not doing so, though they were none too creditable to him. Mr. Canter was too bold with women and not bold enough with men. And a little later it transpired that with one woman, at least, he was as tame as he was with the other sex. The woman the young men referred to kept him in fear of his life for years, and he had neither the physical nor moral courage to break away from her.