ughty, proud, forever absorbed in
the material side of everything, she moved in a self-created
atmosphere Blair could not abide. He went hungry many a time rather
than sit at table with guests such as Mrs. Maynard delighted to honor.

Blair and Margaret had become estranged, and Blair spent most of his
time alone, reading or dreaming, but mostly sleeping. He knew he grew
weaker every day and his weakness appeared to induce slumber.

On New Year's day, after dinner, he fell asleep in a big chair, across
the hall from the drawing-room. And when he awoke the drawing-room was
full of people making New Year's calls. If there was anything Blair
hated it was to thump on his crutch past curious, cold-eyed persons.
So he remained where he was, hoping not to be seen. But unfortunately
for him, he had exceedingly keen ears and exceedingly sensitive
feelings.

Some of the guests he knew very well without having to see them. The
Swanns, and Fanchon Smith, with her brother and mother, Gerald Hartley
and his bride, Helen Wrapp, and a number of others prominent as
Middleville's elect were recognizable by their voices. While he was
sitting there, trying not to hear what he could not help hearing, a
number more arrived.

They talked. It gradually dawned on Blair that some gossip was rife
anent a midnight marriage between his friend Daren Lane and Mel Iden.
Blair was deeply shocked. Then his emotions, never calm, grew
poignant. He listened. What he heard spoken of Daren and Mel made his
blood boil. Sweet voices, low-pitched, well-modulated, with the
intonation of culture, made witty and scarcely veiled remarks of a
suggestiveness that gave rise to laughter. Voices of men, bland,
blase, deriding Daren Lane! Blair listened, and slowly his passion
mounted to a white heat. And then it seemed, fate fully, in a lull of
the conversation, some one remarked graciously to Mrs. Maynard that it
was a pity that Blair had lost a leg in the war.

Blair thumped up on his crutch, and thumped across the hall to
confront this assembly.

"Ladies and gentlemen, pray pardon me," he said, in his high-pitched
tenor, cold now, and under perfect control. "I could not help hearing
your conversation. And I cannot help illuminating your minds. It seems
exceedingly strange to me that people of intelligence should make the
blunders they do. So strange that in the future I intend to take such
as you have made as nothing but the plain cold fact of perversion of
h