rich enough anyhow. Bygones are bygones. I'm perfectly
willing to talk with you from time to time. That's all you want. This
other thing is simply a sop with which to plaster an old wound. You
want my friendship and so far as I'm concerned you have that. I don't
hold any grudge against you. I won't."

Robert looked at him fixedly. He half smiled. He admired Lester in
spite of all that he had done to him--in spite of all that Lester
was doing to him now.

"I don't know but what you're right, Lester," he admitted finally.
"I didn't make this offer in any petty spirit though. I wanted to
patch up this matter of feeling between us. I won't say anything more
about it. You're not coming down to Cincinnati soon, are you?"

"I don't expect to," replied Lester.

"If you do I'd like to have you come and stay with us. Bring your
wife. We could talk over old times."

Lester smiled an enigmatic smile.

"I'll be glad to," he said, without emotion. But he remembered that
in the days of Jennie it was different. They would never have receded
from their position regarding her. "Well," he thought, "perhaps I
can't blame them. Let it go."

They talked on about other things. Finally Lester remembered an
appointment. "I'll have to leave you soon," he said, looking at his
watch.

"I ought to go, too," said Robert. They rose. "Well, anyhow," he
added, as they walked toward the cloakroom, "we won't be absolute
strangers in the future, will we?"

"Certainly not," said Lester. "I'll see you from time to time."
They shook hands and separated amicably. There was a sense of
unsatisfied obligation and some remorse in Robert's mind as he saw his
brother walking briskly away. Lester was an able man. Why was it that
there was so much feeling between them--had been even before
Jennie had appeared? Then he remembered his old thoughts about "snaky
deeds." That was what his brother lacked, and that only. He was not
crafty; not darkly cruel, hence. "What a world!" he thought.

On his part Lester went away feeling a slight sense of opposition
to, but also of sympathy for, his brother. He was not so terribly
bad--not different from other men. Why criticize? What would he
have done if he had been in Robert's place? Robert was getting along.
So was he. He could see now how it all came about--why he had
been made the victim, why his brother had been made the keeper of the
great fortune. "It's the way the world runs," he thought. "What
difference do