er jaw shot out pugnaciously
and his eyes flashed. "Eben, don't be absurd. The two of them are
children. This boy is playing away a vacation. To speak of him as a
matrimonial possibility is to talk irresponsibly. You astonish me!"

"Of course, in some respects it seems anomalous." Tollman spoke
thoughtfully and with no resentment of his companion's temper. He was
quite willing that any objections to Stuart which were projected into
the conversation should appear to come from the other. "For example, his
people are not our people and the two codes are almost antithetical. Yet
his blood is blue blood and, after all, the war is over."

"If I thought that there was even a remote danger of this friendship
ever becoming more than a friendship, I'd have Conscience send him away.
I'd guard her from it as from a contagion." The announcement came
fiercely. "Young Farquaharson's blood is blood that runs to license. His
ideas are the ideas of a hard-drinking, hard-gaming aristocracy. But
nonsense, Eben, he's a harmless boy just out of college. I like him--but
not for my own family. What put such an absurdity into your head?"

"Possibly it is an absurdity." Tollman gave the appearance of a man
who, having suggested a stormy topic, is ready to relinquish it. In
reality he was making Williams say everything which he wished to have
said and was doing it by the simple device of setting up antagonism to
play the prompter. "What put it into my head was perhaps nothing more
tangible than their constant companionship. They are both young. He has
a vital and fascinating personality. There is a touch of Pan and a touch
of Bacchus in him that--"

"Those are somewhat pagan advantages," interrupted the minister with a
crispness which carried the bite of scorn.

"Pagan perhaps, but worth considering, since it is not upon ourselves
that they operate." Tollman rose and went over to the window which gave
off across the garden. He presented the seeming of a man whose thought
was dispassionate, and because dispassionate impossible to ignore. "This
young man has in his blood bold and romantic tendencies which will not
be denied. To him much that we revere seems a type of narrowness. His
ancestors have made a virtue of the indulgences of sideboard and card
table--but the boy is not to blame for that."

Eben Tollman was playing on the prejudices of his host as he might have
played on the keys of a piano. He maintained, as he did it, all the
semblan