traight." And then
with a sigh as he paused alongside of me, "It's very perplexing
sometimes."

I knew what he was thinking about and whom, but he would not speak.

"You have thought me narrow, Jerry, because I laid my life and yours
along pleasant byways and ignored the beaten track. I've never told
you why the world had grown distasteful to me. I think you ought to
know. It may be worth something to you. The old story, always new--a
girl, pretty, insincere. I was just out of the University, with a good
education, some prospects, but no money. We became engaged. She was
going to wait for me until I got a good professorship. But she didn't.
In less than a year, without even the formality of breaking the
engagement, she suddenly married a man who had money, a manufacturer
of gas engines in Taunton, Massachusetts. I won't go into the details.
They're rather sickening from this distance. But I thought you might
like to know why I've never particularly cared to trust women."

"I supposed," he said, thoughtfully, "it might have been something
like that. Women _are_ queer. You think you know them, and then--" He
paused, confession hovering on his lips, but some delicacy restrained
him.

"Women, Jerry, are the flavoring of society; I regret that I have a
poor digestion for sauces. I hope yours will be better."

He laughed. "Poor Roger; was she _very_ pretty?"

"I can't remember. Probably. Calf love seldom considers anything
else--prettiness! Yes she was pretty."

"How old were you?"

"Older than you Jerry--and wiser."

He was silent. Once I thought he was about to speak, but he refrained,
and when he deftly turned the topic, I knew that any chance I might
have had to help him had passed. I understood, of course, and I could
not help respecting his delicacy. Jerry was in for some hard knocks, I
feared, harder ones than Clancy had given him.

He went to bed presently and I sat by the lamp alternately reading and
thinking of Jerry, comparing him with myself in that long-distant
romance of my own. They were not unlike, these two women, pretty
little self-worshipers, born to deceit and chicanery, with clever
talents for concealing their ignorance, hiding the emptiness of their
hearts with pretty tricks of coquetry. But Marcia was the more
dangerous, a clean body and an unclean mind. A half-virgin! I would
have given much to know what had recently passed between Marcia and
Jerry. If there was any way to bring about a di