rted the coasts of
chance, but all of the shipwrecks had occurred after a woman passenger
had been taken on. "Ergo," I had always said "no women!" I repeated
it to myself that evening almost savagely, when I found my thoughts
straying back to the picture of John Gilmore's granddaughter. I even
argued as I ate my solitary dinner at a downtown restaurant.

"Haven't you troubles enough," I reflected, "without looking for more?
Hasn't Bad News gone lame, with a matinee race booked for next week?
Otherwise aren't you comfortable? Isn't your house in order? Do you want
to sell a pony in order to have the library done over in mission or the
drawing-room in gold? Do you want somebody to count the empty cigarette
boxes lying around every morning?"

Lay it to the long idle afternoon, to the new environment, to anything
you like, but I began to think that perhaps I did. I was confoundedly
lonely. For the first time in my life its even course began to waver:
the needle registered warning marks on the matrimonial seismograph,
lines vague enough, but lines.

My alligator bag lay at my feet, still locked. While I waited for my
coffee I leaned back and surveyed the people incuriously. There were the
usual couples intent on each other: my new state of mind made me regard
them with tolerance. But at the next table, where a man and woman dined
together, a different atmosphere prevailed. My attention was first
caught by the woman's face. She had been speaking earnestly across the
table, her profile turned to me. I had noticed casually her earnest
manner, her somber clothes, and the great mass of odd, bronze-colored
hair on her neck. But suddenly she glanced toward me and the utter
hopelessness--almost tragedy--of her expression struck me with a shock.
She half closed her eyes and drew a long breath, then she turned again
to the man across the table.

Neither one was eating. He sat low in his chair, his chin on his chest,
ugly folds of thick flesh protruding over his collar. He was probably
fifty, bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not without a suggestion of
power. But he had been drinking; as I looked, he raised an unsteady hand
and summoned a waiter with a wine list.

The young woman bent across the table and spoke again quickly. She had
unconsciously raised her voice. Not beautiful, in her earnestness and
stress she rather interested me. I had an idle inclination to advise the
waiter to remove the bottled temptation from the table. I