e salmon began to
run.

He left the Northwest offices with the firm conviction that it was not
going to be a question of markets, but a question of getting the salmon.
And he rather fancied he could do that.

Last of all on the list of these men who approached him in this fashion
came Stubby Abbott. Stubby did not ask him to call. He came to the
Granada in search of Jack and haled him, nothing loth, out to the stone
house in the West End. It happened that Betty Gower, Etta Robbin-Steele,
and two gilded youths, whom MacRae did not know, were there. They had
been walking in the Park. Nelly and her mother were serving tea.

It happened, too, that as they chatted over the teacups, a blue-bodied
limousine drew up under the Abbott pergola and deposited Mrs. Horace A.
Gower for a brief conversation with Mrs. Abbott. It was MacRae's first
really close contact with the slender, wonderfully preserved lady whose
life had touched his father's so closely in the misty long ago. He
regarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been very
beautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainly
she was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her rich
furs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant,
querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist.
But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged the
introduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothing
at all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. Merely a young man
among other young men; a young man of no particular interest. Thirty
years is a long time, MacRae reflected. But his father had not
forgotten. He wondered if she had; if those far-off hot-blooded days had
grown dim and unreal to her?

He turned his head once and caught Betty as intent upon him as he was
upon her mother, under cover of the general conversation. He gathered
that there was a shade of reproach, of resentment, in her eyes. But he
could not be sure. Certainly there was nothing like that in her manner.
But the manner of these people, he understood very well, was pretty much
a mask. Whatever went on in their secret bosoms, they smiled and joked
and were unfailingly courteous.

He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered
himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at
repression as most of his class. He was a little more naive, more prone
to act u