and always would be, through their
physical disabilities, their lack of ratiocination, of constructive
ability on the grand scale, the inferiors of men. The rare exceptions
but proved the rule, and no doubt they had been cast in one mould and
finished in another.

In sheer masculine arrogance he was more than her match. Moreover,
there were other ways of keeping a woman subject.

Did he love her? Comprehensively and utterly? Clear thinking fled
with the last of his doubts. . . . And when a man detaches himself
from the gross material surface of life and wings to the realm of the
imagination, where he glimpses immortality, what matter the penalty?
Any penalty? Few had the thrice blessed opportunity. If he were one
of the chosen, the very demi-gods, jeering at mortals, would hate him.

And then abruptly he fell asleep.

XXXI

He went direct from the office that evening to Mrs. Oglethorpe's house
in Gramercy Park. During the morning he had received the following
note from her, and he had puzzled over it at intervals ever since.

"Dear Lee:

"Will you dine alone with an old woman tonight--a rather bewildered and
upset old woman? I suppose to the young nothing is too new and strange
for readjustment, but I have hardly known where I am these last few
days. You are the only friend I care to talk to on the subject, for
you always understand. I am probably older than your mother and I look
old enough to be your grandmother, but you are the only person living
with whom I ever feel inclined to lay aside all reserve. Old men are
fossils and young men regard me as an ancient wreck preserved by family
traditions. As for women I hate them and always did. Do come and dine
with a lonely puzzled old woman unless you have an engagement
impossible to break. Don't bother to dress.

"Your affectionate old friend,
"JANE OGLETHORPE."

"What's up?" Clavering had thought as he finished it. "Mary or Janet?"

It was an extraordinary letter to receive from Mrs. Oglethorpe, the
most fearsome old woman in New York. To Clavering she had always shown
the softer side of her nature and he knew her perhaps better, or at all
events more intimately, than any of her old friends, for she had not
treated him as a negligible junior even when he arrived in New York at
the tender age of twenty-two. His ingenuous precocity had amused her
and she had discovered a keen interest in the newspaper world of whose
existence she