turned Diana severely.
"There must be match-light at least. I draw the line at that. Produce
your pretty, golden box."

Diana opened the green baize door, and Archibald struck a light.

"Ho, ho!" he said, playfully.

"We are evidently _de trop_" said Diana. "Let us retire."

"Be careful," called Margaret. "You'll burn your fingers."

But the mischief was already done. Archibald uttered a "d--n," threw
down the end of the match and stamped on it wrathfully.

Morgan picked up the fallen candle, lighted it and replaced it on the
mantelshelf. The wax was broken in the middle, and the top part
leaned disconsolately to one side.

"We are sorry to have unwittingly interfered with your little
arrangement," said Margaret, curtseying in mock apology. "But you are
quite welcome to make free of my humble abode, so we shall leave you
in possession. Come, Morgan." And the two swept out of the room.

"Come and lunch with me to-morrow at the hotel," said Archibald to
Morgan, as he got into a hansom an hour later. "We'll spend the
afternoon together. There are some points about my book I want to
settle. 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker!' Splendid title!
Morgan, you're indeed a genius. 'An attempt to investigate some
questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' That just
hits it off--the very book I intended to write!"

CHAPTER VII.

When his father had driven off, Morgan, seized with a restlessness,
began to stroll slowly homeward. He had at least wrung some happiness
from the evening. His love for Margaret had been strong enough to
absorb him, save when at moments his sense of his general position had
obtruded. But now he surrendered himself once more to the mood which
the events of the day had interrupted.

He was again conscious of the tragedy of his past life with its
culminating episode of the evening before, and of the infinite
possibility that life held of mystery and fantasy--a mystery and
fantasy into which he was going to plunge. The hours he had just
enjoyed, he told himself, must not be allowed to influence him. They
must be sternly isolated from the future; the disattachment of the new
life before him from the wreckage of the old must be complete.

Wreckage! He used the word deliberately, though he was aware there
were elements in the position that would have made his estimate of it
seem grotesque to many ears.

He was the son of a father of unlimited wealth, who idolised him now.