was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought with him. Youth is a
Prince Charming. To shrivelled veins the pressure of his hand imparts a
spark of animation, and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence,
as a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.

"I have come to take Ernest away from you," said Jack. "He looks a
trifle paler than usual, and a day's outing will stir the red corpuscles
in his blood."

"I have no doubt that you will take very good care of him," Reginald
replied.

"Where shall we go?" Ernest asked, absent-mindedly.

But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's scepticisms had more
deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself.

VII

The two boys had bathed their souls in the sea-breeze, and their eyes in
light.

The tide of pleasure-loving humanity jostling against them had carried
their feet to the "Lion Palace." From there, seated at table and
quenching their thirst with high-balls, they watched the feverish
palpitations of the city's life-blood pulsating in the veins of Coney
Island, to which they had drifted from Brighton Beach.

Ernest blew thoughtful rings of smoke into the air.

"Do you notice the ferocious look in the mien of the average frequenter
of this island resort?" he said to Jack, whose eyes, following the
impulse of his more robust youth, were examining specimens of feminine
flotsam on the waves of the crowd.

"It is," he continued, speaking to himself for want of an audience,
"the American who is in for having a 'good time.' And he is going to get
it. Like a huntsman, he follows the scent of happiness; but I warrant
that always it eludes him. Perhaps his mad race is only the epitome of
humanity's vain pursuit of pleasure, the eternal cry that is never
answered."

But Jack was not listening. There are times in the life of every man
when a petticoat is more attractive to him than all the philosophy of
the world.

Ernest was a little hurt, and it was not without some silent
remonstrance that he acquiesced when Jack invited to their table two
creatures that once were women.

"Why?"

"But they are interesting."

"I cannot find so."

They both had seen better times--of course. Then money losses came, with
work in shop or factory, and the voice of the tempter in the commercial
wilderness.

One, a frail nervous little creature, who had instinctively chosen a
seat at Ernest's side, kept prattling in his ear, ready to tell the