ities. I dislike scandal, and I have no desire to bear tales.
Either is far from being the object of these present pages. Nothing that
I present need be taken as typical, as tyrannously representative.

Raymond criticized, expostulated. Friends began to come to him with
impressions and reports. I--whether for good or ill--was not one of
these. They named names--names which I shall not record here. But it was
one of Raymond's own impressions, and a vivid one, which finally
prompted him to make a move.

IV

January found the social life of the town in full swing. We had
recovered from last year's financial jolt, and entertaining was
constant. Raymond and his wife were invited out a good deal. He was
bored by it all; but his wife remained interested and indefatigable.
Finally came a dance at one of the great houses. Raymond rebelled, and
refused point-blank to go: an evening in his library was his mood. His
wife protested, cajoled, and he finally found a reason for giving in.

As I say, they were bidden to one of the great houses--one of the few
that possessed an actual facade, a central court, and a big staircase:
it had too its galleries of paintings and of Oriental curios before
Oriental curios became too common. Its owner was also, with the rest, a
musical amateur. He was a man of forty-five, and like Raymond had a wife
too many years younger than himself for his own comfort. This lively
lady lived on fiddles and horns--dancing was an inexhaustible pleasure.
At her dancing-parties, of which she gave three or four a season, her
husband would show himself below for a few moments for civility's sake,
and then retire to a remote den on an upper floor, well shut out from
the sounds of his wife's frivolous measures, but accessible to a few
habitues of age and tastes approximating his own.

The question of music of another quality and to another purpose was in
the air--it was a matter of endowing and housing an orchestra. Informal
_pour-parlers_ were under way in various quarters, and Raymond felt
disposed, and even able, to contribute in a modest measure. It was his
pride to have been asked, and it was his pride, despite untoward
conditions, to put up a good front and do as much as he could. An hour's
confab over cigarettes in that retired little den might clarify one
atmosphere, if not another.

The court and its staircase were set with palms, as is the ineluctable
wont on such occasions and for such places; and peo