tan aspired when freshly released from
college; the others were of the fashionable and semi-fashionable sort,
tedious, monotonous, full of the aimless, the idle, or of that
bustling and showy smartness which is perhaps even less admirable and
less easy to endure.

Men destitute of mental resources and dependent upon others for their
amusement, disillusioned men, lazy men, socially ambitious men, men
gluttonously or alcoholically predisposed haunted these clubs. To one
of them repaired those who were inclined to racquettes, squash,
tennis, and the swimming tank. It was a sort of social clearing house
for other clubs.

But The Geyser was the least harmless of the clubs affected by C.
Bailey, Jr.,--it being an all-night resort and the haunt of the
hopeless sport. Here dissipation, futile, aimless, meaningless, was on
its native heath. Here, on his own stamping ground, prowled the
youthful scion of many a dissipated race--nouveau riche and
Knickerbocker alike. All that was required of anybody was money and a
depthless capacity.

It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil Reeve one stormy
midnight.

"You don't come here often, do you?" said the latter.

Clive said he didn't.

"Neither do I. But when I do there's a few doing. Will you have a high
one, Clive? In deference to our late and revered university?"

Clive would so far consent to degrade himself for the honour of Alma
Mater.

There was much honour done her that evening.

Toward the beginning of the end Clive said: "I can't sit up all night,
Cecil. What do you do for a living, anyway?"

"Bank a bit."

[Illustration: "It was in this place that Clive encountered Cecil
Reeve one stormy midnight."]

"Oh, that's just amusement. What do you work at?"

"I didn't mean that kind of bank!" said Reeve, annoyed. All sense of
humour fled him when hammerlocked with Bacchus. At such psychological
moments, too, he became indiscreet. And now he proposed to Clive an
excursion amid what he termed the "high lights of Olympus," which the
latter discouraged.

"All right then. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give a Byzantine
party! I know a little girl--"

"Oh, shut up!"

"She's a fine little girl, Clive--"

"This is no hour to send out invitations."

"Why not? Her name is Catharine--"

"Dry up!"

"Catharine Greensleeve--"

"What!"

"Certainly. She's a model at Winton's joint. She's a peach.
Appropriately crowned with roses she might have presided for