shot to the elbow.

"You are the one man I do want to see, Norvil. Even a miserable devil
like me can talk to you, and there's a thing I want you to do for me, if
you will."

"Name it."

Haswell glanced wearily about the big room and assured himself that no
one was near enough to overhear his unbosoming. He still spoke in the
dulled voice of a dulled heart. His utterance, like his movements, was
slow and labored.

"There are times when you've got to talk--or get to feeling giddy and
wrong in the head. I've about cut most of my clubs, but I can't cut
meeting the men--down-town."

The Englishman nodded, but he said nothing.

"I'm getting rather sick of being asked--" Len halted, then forced the
words doggedly--"how Loraine is and when I expect her back. I--well, I
don't expect her back, and it hurts like hell to say so."

Norvil met the other's eyes and read in them a fulness of dumb
suffering, such as might come into those of a great, faithful dog. His
own question followed with a softness of assured sympathy. "And, of
course, you want her back?"

A paroxysm of pain distorted his companion's face and his head flinched
back as though it had been heavily struck.

"God! yes, like a strangling man wants breath," he said.

It was a misery for which there was no aid, so Thayre satisfied himself
with the inquiry: "What is this thing you want me to do?"

"Just intimate to these men that they stop asking those questions,
that's all."

"Is there any one you particularly blame?"

Haswell shook his head. "No. There was at first, but the principal point
is that she has decided she can't be happy with me. If I try to hold her
after knowing that I become her jailer. I treat her as my property. I
hope I'm not that sort. I had my chance and have failed."

"I say, I don't want to be impertinent, you know." Thayre bent forward
and spoke earnestly. "There are things a man doesn't like to have put up
to him. But you aren't letting this knock you off your line, are you?
You aren't going to let it bowl you over?"

Again the tall man shook his head. "No, I'm quite all right," he said.
"I'm going fairly straight--so far."

Late that night a wet snow was falling and Madison square was almost
deserted. Here and there in the Metropolitan and Flatiron buildings
shone an isolated and belated window light. At the Garden a Wild West
show with rings and side performances had long ago disgorged its crowds
and quieted its pandemonium