the girl did not want to marry him. It was her mother's doings."
O'Hara scowled. "I also have heard that the mother engineered it… What was Mrs. Leeds's name? I forget – "
"Strelsa Lanark," said Quarren who never forgot anything.
"Ugh," grunted Westguard. "Fancy a mother throwing her daughter at the head of a boy like Reggie Leeds! – as vicious and unclean a little whelp as ever – Oh, what's the use? – and de mortius nihil– et cetera, cock-a-doodle-do!"
"That poor girl had two entire years of him," observed Lacy. "She doesn't look more than twenty now – and he's been in – been dead two years. Good Heavens! What a child she must have been when she married him!"
Westguard nodded: "She had two years of him – and I suppose he seldom drew a perfectly sober breath… He dragged her all over the world with him – she standing for his rotten behaviour, trying to play the game with the cards hopelessly stacked against her. Vincent Wier met them in Naples; Mallison ran across them in Egypt; so did Lydon in Vienna. They said it was heartbreaking to see her trying to keep up appearances – trying to smile under his nagging or his drunken insults in public places. Lydon told me that she behaved like a brick – stuck to Reggie, tried to shield him, excuse him, make something out of the miserable pup who was doing his best to drag her to his own level and deprave her. But I guess she was too young or too unhappy or something, because there's no depravity in the girl who was here a few minutes ago. I'll swear to that."
After a moment Lacy said: "Well, he got his at last!"
"What was comin' to him," added O'Hara, with satisfaction.
Lacy added, curiously: "How can a man misbehave when he has such a woman for a wife?"
"I wonder," observed Quarren, "how many solid citizens read the account in the papers and remained scared longer than six weeks?"
"Lord help the wives of men," growled Westguard… "If any of you fellows are dressing for dinner you'd better be about it… Wait a moment, Rix!" – as Quarren, the last to leave, was already passing the threshold.
The young fellow turned, smiling: the others went on; Westguard stood silent for a moment, then:
"You're about the only man I care for very much," he said bluntly. "If I am continually giving you the Bible and the Sword it's the best I have to give."
Quarren replied laughingly.
"Don't worry, old fellow. I take what you say all right. And I really mean to cut out a lot of fussing and begin to hustle… Only, isn't it a wise thing to keep next to possible clients?"
"The people you train with don't buy lots in Tappan-Zee Park."
"But I may induce them to go into more fashionable enterprises – "
"Not they! The eagle yells on every dollar they finger. If there's any bleeding to be done they'll do it, my son."
"Lester Caldera has already asked me about acreage in Westchester."
"Did he do more than ask?"
"No."
"Did you charge him for the consultation?"
"Of course not."
"Then he got your professional opinion for nothing."
"But he, or others, may try to assemble several farms – "
"Why don't they then? – instead of dragging you about at their heels from house to house, from card-room to ball-room, from café to opera, from one week-end to the next! – robbing you of time, of leisure, of opportunity, of ambition – spoiling you – making a bally monkey of you! You're always in some fat woman's opera box or on some fat man's yacht or coach, or doing some damn thing – with your name figuring in everything from Newport to Hot Springs – and – and how can you ever turn into anything except a tame cat!"
Quarren's face reddened slightly.
"I'd be perfectly willing to sit in an office all day and all night if anybody would give me any business. But what's the use of chewing pencils and watching traffic on Forty-second Street?"
"Then go into another business!"
"I haven't any money."
"I'll lend it to you!"
"I can't risk your money, Karl. I'm too uncertain of myself. If anybody else offered to stake me I'd try the gamble." … He looked up at Westguard, ashamed, troubled, and showing it like a boy. "I'm afraid I don't amount to anything, Karl. I'm afraid I'm no good except in the kind of thing I seem to have a talent for."
"Fetching and carrying for the fashionable and wealthy," sneered Westguard.
Quarren's face flushed again: "I suppose that's it."
Westguard glared at him: "I wish I could shake it out of you!"
"I guess the poison's there," said Quarren in a low voice. "The worst of it is I like it – except when I understand your contempt."
"You like to fetch and carry and go about with your pocket full of boudoir keys!"
"People give me as much as I give them."
"They don't!" said the other angrily. "They've taken a decent fellow and put him in livery!"
Quarren bit his lip as the blood leaped to his face.
"Don't talk that way, Karl," he said quietly. "Even you have no business to take that tone with me."
There was a silence. After a few moments Westguard came over and held out his hand. Quarren took it, looked at him.
"I tell you," he said, "there's nothing to me. It's your kindness, Karl, that sees in me possibilities that never were."
"They're there. I'll do my duty almost to the point of breaking our friendship. But – I'll have to stop short of that point."
A quick smile came over Quarren's face, gay, affectionate:
"You couldn't do that, Karl… And don't worry. I'll cut out a lot of frills and try to do things that are worth while. I mean it, really. Don't worry, old fellow."
"All right," said Westguard, smiling.
CHAPTER II
A masked dance, which for so long has been out of fashion in the world that pretends to it, was the experiment selected by Molly Wycherly for the warming up of her new house on Park Avenue.
The snowy avenue for blocks was a mass of motors and carriages; a platoon of police took charge of the vehicular mess. Outside of the storm-coated lines the penniless world of shreds and patches craned a thousand necks as the glittering costumes passed from brougham and limousine under the awnings into the great house.
Already in the new ball-room, along the edges of the whirl, masqueraders in tumultuous throngs were crowding forward to watch the dancers or drifting into the eddies and set-backs where ranks of overloaded gilt chairs creaked under jewelled dowagers, and where rickety old beaux impersonated tinselled courtiers on wavering but devoted legs.
Aloft in their rococo sky gallery a popular orchestra fiddled frenziedly; the great curtains of living green set with thousands of gardenias swayed in the air currents like Chinese tapestries; a harmonious tumult swept the big new ball-room from end to end – a composite uproar in which were mingled the rushing noise of silk, clatter of sole and heel, laughter and cries of capering maskers gathered from the four quarters of fashionable Gath to grace the opening of the House of Wycherly. They were all there, dowager, matron, débutante, old beaux, young gallant, dancing, laughing, coquetting, flirting. Young eyes mocked the masked eyes that wooed them; adolescence tormented maturity; the toothless ogled the toothsome. Unmasking alone could set right this topsy-turvy world of carnival.
A sinuous Harlequin, his skin-tight lozenge-patterned dress shimmering like the red and gold skin of a Malay snake, came weaving his way through the edges of the maelstrom, his eyes under the black half-mask glittering maliciously at the victims of his lathe-sword. With it he recklessly slapped whatever tempted him, patting gently the rounded arms and shoulders of nymph and shepherdess, using more vigour