declared; "it has a tensile strength. I know what
it will do. This," he indicated the fragment of a grace razed over
twenty-three hundred years before, "is good for nothing that I see."
Now, Howat told himself, it was merely a question of tensile strength.
His old enthusiasms, his passionate admiration for the operas of
Christopher Gluck, the enthusiasms and admirations of his kind, were
being pushed aside for things of more obvious practicality. The very
term that had distinguished his world, men of breeding, had been
discarded. Individuals like James Polder, blunt of speech, contemptuous,
labour scarred, were paramount to-day.

His thoughts, he realized, were a part of the questioning thrust on him
by the intrusion of Mariana's unfortunate affair into his old age. She
was always dragging him to a perplexing spectacle for which he had
neither energy nor inclination. But he'd be damned if he would allow the
importunities of the young man beyond the table to complicate further
his difficulties, and he retired abruptly behind the _Saturday Review_.
"You'd better get along up," he said brusquely, after a little.

Breakfast at an end, they settled into a not uncomfortable, mutual
silence. They smoked; James Polder unfolded newspapers which he
neglected to read; Howat went through the periodicals with audible
expressions of displeasure. He wondered when Mariana would appear.
Mariana made a fool of him, that was evident; however, he would put his
foot on any philandering about Shadrach. He could be as blunt as James
Polder when the occasion demanded. After lunch the latter fell asleep in
his chair on the porch, pallidly insensible of the sparkling flood of
afternoon. Howat rose and went into the house. It was indecent to see a
countenance so wearily unguarded, shorn of all protective aggression.
Mariana walked in unannounced.

"Why didn't you telephone for Honduras?" he complained. "Always some
infernal difference in what you do." She frowned. "Suddenly," she
admitted, "I wasn't in a hurry to get here. I almost went back.
Idiotic."

"Sensible, it seems to me," he commented. "That Polder is asleep on the
porch." She nodded, "Splendid. And you needn't try to look fierce. I can
see through you and out the back." He lit a cigarette angrily. "Going to
stay for the night?" he demanded. "Several," she replied coolly. "Three
can play sniff."

"Look here, Mariana," he proclaimed, "I won't have any nonsense, do you
understand?"