gh repudiating, in their embarrassment, such company. Marion
Slater, sitting at ease on her bench, cast one glance at Harry Banks
as he whirled to face her. His eyes fell; on the next turn, he waltzed
Kate back to her seat. The relationship between these two was a puzzle
to their familiars. He, the uncaught bachelor, the flaneur, the
epicurean, he who lived for his pleasures, taking them with a
calculated moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she,
the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed
always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the
frivolous and unconventional rich--people had wondered for years how
there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that
the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but
thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow or moved
her hand, and the motion translated itself to speech in his mind. That
glance of her had made his mind say, "I am making them all
ridiculous."

And, like the spoiled child that he was, he ceased from one
naughtiness only to plunge into another and worse one. As Kate dropped
to the bench, he looked at Bertram and said:

"You try it; I am a little rusty." One of his rare embarrassments
flamed into the face of Bertram Chester. The shot had gone more truly
than Harry Banks could have known.

"No, thank you," Bertram said simply, and flushed again.

Masters spoke up from his corner:

"Well, Chester, you ought to be a good dancer if build counts--though
I shouldn't like to have you showing off your accomplishment right
here--you might lack the public finish of the Banks style. You big
football fellows always have the call on the little men in dancing.
It is a matter of bulk and base, I think." The ferry boat was passing
Alcatraz now, and the populace had turned its attention away from
Harry Banks and his party. The spoiled child kept straight ahead.

"They make real, ball-room gents," he said. He turned toward Marion on
this; turned as though he could not keep his look away. She lifted her
eyebrow again, and he fell into a sulky silence.

The others rushed to the first refuge of tact--personalities. After a
moment, Banks joined the talk; and then appeared another aspect of his
perverse mood. He took the conversation into his own hands, and he
talked of nothing which could by any chance include Bertram Chester,
the callow newcomer, the outsider. It was al