ence; Kerns returned her
amused gaze rather blankly.

"Clubs!" sniffed Gatewood. "What are clubs but pretexts for wasting
time? What mental, what spiritual stimulus can a man expect to find in a
club? Why, Kerns, when I look back a year and think what I was, and when
I look at you and think what you still are--"

"John," said Mrs. Gatewood softly.

"Oh, he knows it!" insisted her husband, "don't you, Tommy? You know the
sort of life you're leading, don't you? You know what a miserable,
aimless, selfish, unambitious, pitiable existence an unmarried man leads
who lives at his club; don't you?"

"Certainly," said Kerns, blinking into the smiling gaze of Mrs.
Gatewood.

"Then why don't you marry?"

But Kerns had risen and was making his adieus with cheerful decision;
and Mrs. Gatewood was laughing as she gave him her slender hand.

"Now I know a girl--" began Gatewood; but his wife was still speaking to
Kerns, so he circled around them, politely suppressing the excitement of
a sudden idea struggling for utterance.

Mrs. Gatewood was saying: "I do wish John would go to his clubs
occasionally. Because a man is married is no reason for his losing touch
with his clubs--"

"I know a girl," broke in Gatewood excitedly, laying his arm on Kerns's
to detain him; but Kerns slid sideways through the door with a smile so
noncommittal that Mrs. Gatewood laughed again and, linking her arm in
her husband's, faced partly toward him. This maneuver, and the
slightest pressure of her shoulder, obliged her husband to begin a
turning movement, so that Kerns might reasonably make his escape in the
middle of Gatewood's sentence; which he did with nimble and circumspect
agility.

"I--I know a--" began Gatewood desperately, twisting his head over his
shoulder, only to hear the deadened patter of his friend's feet over the
velvet stair carpet and the subdued clang of the front door.

"Isn't it extraordinary?" he said to his wife. "I've been trying to tell
Tommy, every time he comes here, about a girl I know--just the very girl
he ought to marry; and something prevents him from listening every
time."

The attractive young matron beside him turned her face so that her eyes
were directly in line with his.

"Did you ever know any people named Manners?" she asked.

"No. Why?"

"You never knew a girl named Marjorie Manners, did you, John?"

"No. What about her?"

"You never heard Mr. Kerns speak of her, did you, dear?"

"No, never