n the country," I explained, resenting my
own instinctive embarrassment.

"Ah! Don't say! Didn't know you went in for that sort of thing! Well,
good night!"

He sprang into the only remaining taxi without asking me to share it and
vanished in a cloud of gasoline smoke. I was in no mood for waiting;
besides I was going to be democratic. I took a surface car up Lexington
Avenue and stood between the distended knees of a fat and somnolent
Italian gentleman for thirty blocks. The car was intolerably stuffy and
smelled strongly of wet umbrellas and garlic. By the time I reached the
cross-street on which I lived it had begun to pour. I turned up my coat
collar and ran to my house.

Somehow I felt like a small boy as I threw myself panting inside my own
marble portal. My butler expressed great sympathy for my condition and
smuggled me quickly upstairs. I fancy he suspected there was something
discreditable about my absence. A pungent aroma floated up from the
drawing room, where the bridge players were steadily at work. I confess
to feeling rather dirty, wet and disreputable.

"I'm sorry, sir," said my butler as he turned on the electric switch in
my bedroom, "but I didn't expect you back this evening, and so I told
Martin he might go out."

A wave of irritation, almost of anger, swept over me. Martin was my
perfect valet.

"What the devil did you do that for!" I snapped.

Then, realizing my inconsistency, I was ashamed, utterly humiliated and
disgusted with myself. This, then, was all that my resolution amounted
to after all!

"I am very sorry, sir," repeated my butler. "Very sorry, sir, indeed.
Shall I help you off with your things?"

"Oh, that's all right!" I exclaimed, somewhat to his surprise. "Don't
bother about me. I'll take care of myself."

"Can't I bring you something?" he asked solicitously.

"No, thanks!" said I. "I don't need anything that you can give me!"

"Very good, sir," he replied. "Good night, sir."

"Good night," I answered, and he closed the door noiselessly.

I lit a cigarette and, tossing off my coat, sank into a chair. My mere
return to that ordered elegance seemed to have benumbed my
individuality. Downstairs thirty of our most intimate friends were
amusing themselves at the cardtables, confident that at eleven-thirty
they would be served with supper consisting of salads, ice-cream and
champagne. They would not hope in vain. If they did not get it--speaking
broadly--they would not co