re sure you aren't ill?" she said, when they were at her
door--a superb bronze door it was, opening into a house of the splendor
that for the acclimated New Yorker quite conceals and more than
compensates absence of individual taste. "You don't look ill. But you
act queerly."

"I'm often this way when they drive me too hard down town."

She looked at him with fond admiration; he might have been better
pleased had there not been in the look a suggestion of the possessive.
"How they do need you! Father says--But I mustn't make you any vainer
than you are."

He usually loved compliment, could take it in its rawest form with fine
human gusto. Now, he did not care enough about that "father says" to
rise to her obvious bait. "I'm horribly tired," he said. "Shall I see
you to-morrow? No, I guess not--not for several days. You understand?"

"Perfectly," replied she. "I'll miss you dreadfully, but my father has
trained me well. I know I mustn't be selfish--and tempt you to neglect
things."

"Thank you," said he. "I must be off."

"You'll come in--just a moment?" Her eyes sparkled. "The butler will
have sense enough to go straight away--and the small reception room will
be quite empty as usual."

He could not escape. A few seconds and he was alone with her in the
little room--how often had he--they--been glad of its quiet and
seclusion on such occasions! She laid her hand upon his shoulders, gazed
at him proudly. "It was here," said she, "that you first kissed me. Do
you remember?"

To take her gaze from his face and to avoid seeing her look of loving
trust, he put his arms round her. "I don't deserve you," he said--one of
those empty pretenses of confession that yet give the human soul a sense
of truthfulness.

"You'd not say that if you knew how happy you make me," murmured she.

The welcome sound of a step in the hall give him his release. When he
was in the street, he wiped his hot face with his handkerchief. "And I
thought I had no moral sense left!" he reflected--not the first man, in
this climax day of the triumph of selfish philosophies, to be astonished
by the discovery that the dead hands of heredity and tradition have a
power that can successfully defy reason.

He started to walk back home, on impulse took a passing taxi and went to
his club. It was the Federal. They said of it that no man who amounted
to anything in New York could be elected a member, because any man on
his way up could not but offend on