In the club window, on the following afternoon, Jones was airing copy.

"Capua must have been packed with yawns. It is the malediction of mortals to want what they lack until they get it, when they want it no more. Epicurus said that or, if he did not, Lucretius said it for him. 'Surgit amari aliquid.' But here I am running into quotations when the only ones that interest anybody are those in the Street. Conditions here are revolting. Nowhere at any time has there been a metropolis that so stank to heaven. The papers drip with stocks and scandals and over there, before the massed artillery, the troops are wheeling down to death. But wheeling is perhaps poetic. The Marne was the last battle in the grand style."

"I don't see what that has to do with Capua," said Verelst.

"Nor I," Jones replied. "But, come to think of it, there is a connection. In Capua everybody yawned their heads off. In Flanders and Champagne they are shot off. Life swings like a pendulum between boredom and pain. When the world is not anÆmic, it is delirious. If ever again its pulse registers normal, sensible people will go back to Epicurus, whose existence was one long lesson in mental tranquillity. By the Lord Harry, the more I consider it, the more convinced I become that there is nothing else worth having. Niente, nada, rien. Nothing whatever."

Verelst smiled. "In that case it is hardly worth while getting excited over it." He raised the lapel of his coat. There were violets in it. He took a whiff and added: "Has Lennox been here to-day?"

But Jones did not know.

Regretfully, Verelst continued: "He goes to Mineola to-morrow and soon he will be over the top."

Jones lit a cigarette. "Assuming that he gets back, the women will be mad about him. Some of them at any rate."

Verelst rolled an enquiring eye.

"Of course they will," Jones resumed. "Times have changed precious little since Victor Hugo.

"What rhythm! What music! The score is Napoleonic but——"

"Hello!" Verelst interrupted. Before the window a car had passed. He was looking at it. On the back seat was a man in a high hat and an overcoat. "M. P.!" he exclaimed.

"What of it?" Jones asked.

Verelst removed his glasses and looked distrustfully at them. It was as though he doubted their vision. Then, after a moment he said: "Last night I heard he was dying."

"Which," Jones remarked, "is the aim, the object and the purpose of life. But apparently he has not achieved it yet. Apparently also you are a futurist. The Napoleonic score did not interest you."

Verelst, resuming his glasses, replied: "It would not interest Lennox, if that is what you mean. He has been hit too hard."

Jones nodded. He knew all about it. It had even suggested a story, a famous story; one that was told in Babylon and has been retold ever since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter before the hero—whose death had been falsely gazetted—limps in.

But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The reader is so nice-minded!

Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women has, I am sure, made you indulgent."

"Not in the least."

"But——"

"Look here," Verelst interrupted. "When I was young and consequently very experienced, I was indulgent. But monsters change you. Last night I dined with one."

"Enviable mortal!"

"You remember Abraham?" Verelst continued. "His name was Abraham—wasn't it?—that benevolent old man in the Bible who made the sacrifice of sacrificing an animal instead of his son? Well, last night it seemed to me that there are women Abrahams, only less benevolent. The altar was veiled, the knife was concealed, but the victim was there—a girl for whom, at your age, I would have died, or offered to die, which amounts to the same thing. What is more to the point, at your age, or no, for you are much older than your conversation would lead one to believe, but in my careless days I offered to die for her mother. I swore I could not live without her. That is always a mistake. It is too flattering, besides being untrue. Perhaps she so regarded it. In any event another man fared better or worse. Afterward, time and again, he said to me: 'Peter, for God's sake, run away with her.' Am I boring you?"

"Enormously."

"Well, he was very gentlemanly about it. Without making a fuss at home, he went away and died in a hospital. She was very grateful to him for that. But her gratitude waned when she came in for his money. It was adequate but not opulent, the result being that she tried to train her daughter for the great matrimonial steeplechase. Just here the plot thickens. Recently the filly shied, took the bit in her teeth and—hurrah, boys!—she was off on her own, until her mother jockied her up to a hurdle that she could not take and the filly came a cropper. But her mother was still one too many for her. She had her up in a jiffy and now she is heading her straight for the sweepstakes."

"Excuse me," Jones with affected meekness put in. "I assume that the sacrificial victim and the filly are one and the same."

"Your perspicacity does you much credit."

Jones laughed. "I have my little talents. But you! The wizardry with which you mix metaphors is beautiful. You produce a dinner-table and transform it into an altar which instantly becomes a racecourse. That is what I call genius. But to an every-day sort of chap like me, would you mind being less cryptic?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"So can I."

Again Jones laughed. "Not in my neighbourhood. You were talking of Lennox and drifted from him into the Bible. Your thoughts of the one recalled studies of the other and at once you had Abraham's daughter downed on the racecourse. Well, she won't be."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it is my business to see things before they occur. Miss Austen——"

"I never mentioned her," Verelst heatedly exclaimed. "You have no right to——"

"I admit it. But because of Lennox the whole matter has preoccupied me and quite as much, I daresay, as it has distressed you."

"I don't see at all what you have to do with it."

"Perhaps not. But preoccupation may lead to crystal-gazing. Now I will wager a red pippin that I can tell what you said at the steeplechase to the steeplestakes. You asked after his father."

Verelst stared. A man of the world and, as such, at his ease in any circumstances, none the less he was startled. "How in God's name did you get that?"

"It is very simple. Five minutes ago his father sailed by. You made a remark about him. The remark suggested a train of thought which landed you at the racecourse where you saw, or intimated that you saw, the steeplestakes. But what visible sweepstakes are there except M. P.'s son? You and M. P. are friends. It is only natural that you should ask about him."

Verelst turned uneasily. "I don't yet see how you got it. The only thing I said is that I heard he was dying."

"And five minutes ago you exclaimed at his resurrection. There is a discrepancy there that is very suggestive."

"It is none of my making then."

"It is none the less suggestive. The death-bed was invented."

"M. P. may have recovered."

"Yes, men of his age make a practice of jumping into their death-bed and then jumping out. It is good for them. It keeps them in training."

"Oh, rubbish!" Verelst resentfully exclaimed.

"No," Jones pursued. "The story was invented and the invention had a reason. If you like, you may ask what it is."

"You seem to be very good at invention yourself. I shall ask nothing of the kind."

"But you would like to know and I will tell you. It was invented to delay a possible announcement. It could have had no other object."

"I said nothing of any announcement," Verelst angrily protested. "What announcement are you talking about?"

"The heading of the filly for the sweepstakes. The expression—very graphic by the way—is your own."

"Graphic or not I wish you would drop it. Besides——"

"Besides what?"

"Why, confound it, admitting the engagement, which I ought not to admit for it is not out yet, why should he play for delay?"

"Ha!" exclaimed Jones, whom the spectacle of Paliser and Cassy sailing up the Riverside had supplied with an impression or two. "I thought I would interest you. He played for delay because he feared that if it were known, a pitcher of ice-water might come dashing over it."

"Why do you say that?" asked Verelst, eager and anxious enough for a spoke—if spoke there could be—to shove in a certain lady's wheels.

"Given the man and the deduction is easy."

The spoke was receding. Verelst, swallowing his disappointment, retorted: "Incoherence is easy too."

"Well, you are right there," Jones, lighting another cigarette, replied. "But there is nothing incoherent in the fact that fear is magnetic. What we dread, we attract. If our winning young friend fears the pitcher, the pitcher will probably land on him. That is the reason why, to vary your various metaphors, I declared that there would be no downing on the racecourse. On the contrary and look here. I will wager you not one pippin or two pippins, I will go so far as to lay a whole basket that Miss Austen becomes Mrs. Lennox."

Verelst sniffed. "You don't know her mother."

"No. I have not that honour. But I enjoy a bowing acquaintance with logic."

"Do you, now? I wonder if it bows back. I'll book your bet."

"Very good. Make it fancy pippins."

Verelst stood up. "Fancy is the only term that could be applied them."

"And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," Jones told himself as the old man moved away.

He looked about. The great room had filled. Stocks, money, war, the odour of alcohol, the smell of cigars, the rustling of evening papers, the sound of animated talk about nothing whatever, the usual atmosphere had reassembled itself.

From it he turned to the window, to the westering sun, to the motors, the smart gowns and the women who looked so delightful and of whom all had their secrets—secrets trivial, momentous, perverse or merely horrible.

Again he turned. Lennox, who had approached, was addressing him. "You were at the law school. I have to make a will. Will you help me?"

Serviceably Jones sprang up. "Come to my shop. It is just around the corner."