of masculine aberration with which he
was even more familiar. He grinned sympathetically, and Clavering was
not too distraught to detect the point of view of the young
philosopher. He had been running his hands through his hair and no
doubt his eyes were injected with blood. He told him to wait, and went
into his bedroom. But the note was brief and required no answer. "I
believe you." That was all, and it was enough. He gave the astonished
philosopher a five-dollar bill: an automatic American reaction.

Then he sat down to puzzle over those parts of her letter which he had
barely skimmed; faded into insignificance for the moment before the
outstanding confession that she really loved him. But they loomed
larger and larger, more and more puzzling and ominous, as he read and
reread them. Finally he thrust the pages into his desk and went out
for a tramp.

XXIV

It was a cold bright day. The ice on the trees of Central Park was a
diamond iridescence. Nursemaids were leading children, bits of muffled
wealth, along the alleys. Horses pounded on the bridle paths.
Automobiles and taxis, that must have looked to the airman above like
aimless black planes drifting in a crystal sea, were carrying people to
a thousand destinies. Towering on all sides was the irregular concrete
mass of New York. As dusk fell, lights in those high buildings began
to appear, first intermittently, then as long necklaces of brilliants
strung against the sky. Silence fell on the Park.

Clavering walked until he could walk no farther, then took a bus at One
Hundred and Tenth Street for Claremont. When he reached the restaurant
he could think of only three men whose companionship would be
endurable, and failing to get any of them on the telephone resigned
himself to a solitary dinner. But still restless, he wandered over to
a window and stared out across the Hudson at the dark Palisades on the
opposite shore. Battleships were at anchor, for there had been no ice
in the Hudson this winter, and a steamboat with its double chain of
lights swam gracefully up the river. The cold winter stars winked down
indifferently upon seething human hearts.

He still refused to admit that the source of his uneasiness was that
revelation set for Saturday night. Nothing but death itself could halt
his marriage with this woman, for she herself had unequivocally stated
that after Saturday night the future would be in his hands.
_His!_ . . . He