tion as that
of food.

He joined Bangs just as that youth was finishing his after-breakfast
cigar. Even under its soothing influence, he was in the mood of combined
exasperation and depression with which his friends were becoming
familiar.

"If we had begun work as soon as we got back to town after your sister's
wedding," he told Laurie, "we'd have had two acts ready by now, in the
rough."

"No reason why you shouldn't have four acts ready, so far as I can see,"
murmured Laurie, cheerfully attacking his grape-fruit. "All you've got
to do is to write 'em."

Bangs's lips set.

"Not till I've talked 'em over with you and got your ideas," he
declared, positively. "If you'd just let me give you an outline--"

Laurie set down his cup.

"Do I get my breakfast in peace, or don't I?" he demanded, coldly.

"You do, confound you!"

Bangs bit off the end of a fresh cigar and smoked it in stolid silence.
He was a person of one idea. If he couldn't talk about the play, he
couldn't talk at all. He meditated, considering his characters, his
situations, his partner's and his own position, in a mental jumble that
had lately become habitual and which was seriously affecting his nerves.
Laurie, as he ate, chatted cheerfully and at random, apparently avoiding
with care any subject that might interest his partner. Bangs rose
abruptly.

"Well, I'm off," he said. "See you at dinner time, I suppose."

But Laurie, it appeared, had engagements. He was taking a party of
friends out to Gedney Farms that evening, in his new car, and they might
decide to stay there for a day or two. Also, though he did not confide
this fact to Bangs, he had an engagement for the afternoon, at a place
where the card rooms were quiet and elegant and the stakes high.

He had been there half a dozen times, and had played each time. He had
been able to keep himself in hand. In fact, a great part of the
fascination of the game now lay in the study of its effect on himself
and its test of his new-born will power. Thus far, he had played exactly
as much as he had planned to play, and had secretly exulted in the fact.
What he intended, he told himself, was to learn to do things in
moderation; neither to fear them nor to let them master him.

The attraction of these diversions filled his mind. He quite forgot the
girl in the mirror, and it was no thought of her that drew him back to
New York that night. The plans of his guests had changed, that was all.
The c