t of the Club,
and Mrs. Wordling called his name. He waited while she dismissed her
driver familiarly.... The Northern beauty of the night was full of
charm to him. A full moon rode aloft in the blue. He had been thinking
that there was cruelty and destruction wherever crowds gathered; that
great cities were not a development of higher manhood. He thought of
the sparcely tenanted islands around the world, of Australian, Siberian
and Canadian areas--of glorious, virgin mountain places and empty
shores--where these pent and tortured tens of thousands might have
breathed and lived indeed. All they needed was but to dare. But they
seemed not yet lifted from the herd; as though it took numbers to make
an entity, a group to make a soul. The airs were still; the night
serene as in a zone of peace blessed of God. The silence of Gramercy
gave him back poise which the city--a terrible companion--had torn
apart.

"That's old John, who never misses a night at my theatre door, when
that door opens to New York," Mrs. Wordling said. "He only asks to know
that I am in the city to be at my service night or day. And who would
have a taxicab on a night like this?... Let's not hurry in.... Have you
been away?"

"No, Mrs. Wordling."

"Don't you think you are rather careless with your friends?" she asked,
as one whom the earth had made much to mourn. "It is true, I haven't
been here many times for dinner (there have been so many invitations),
but breakfasts and luncheons--always I have peeked into the farthest
corners hoping to see you--before I sat down alone."

"I have missed a great deal, but it's good to be thought of," he said.

"You didn't mean, then, to be careless with your friends?"

"No."

"I thought you were avoiding me."

"If there were people here to be avoided, I'm afraid I shouldn't stay."

"But supposing you liked the place very much, and there was just one
whom you wished to avoid----"

He laughed. "I give it up. I might stay--but I don't avoid--certainly
not one of my first friends in New York----"

"Yes, I was a member of the original company, when David Cairns'
_Sailor-Friend_ was produced.... How different you seem from that
night!" she added confidentially. "How is it you make people believe
you so? You have been a great puzzle to me--to us. I supposed at first
you were just a breezy individual, whom David Cairns (who is a very
brilliant man) had found an interesting type----"

"So long as I don't fall f