own front teeth. And again Oliver, looking back as a man might to the
feverish details of a major operation, realized with cynic mirth that
that was a very favorable symptom indeed. Oh everything was going along
simply finely for Ted, if the poor fool only knew it. But that he would
no more believe of course than you would a dentist who told you
he wasn't going to hurt. People in love _were_ poor fools--damn
fools--unutterably lucky, unutterably perfect--fools.

Ted and Oliver must have one talk though before it all happened beyond
redemption and Ted started wearing that beautiful anesthetized smile and
began to concoct small kindly fatal conspiracies with Elinor and Oliver
and some nice girl. They hadn't had a real chance to talk since Oliver
came back from St. Louis, and shortly--oh very shortly indeed by the way
things looked--the only thing they would be able to talk about would be
Elinor and how wonderful she and requited love and young happy marriage
were--and however glad Oliver might be for Ted and his luck--he really
wouldn't be able to stand that, under the present circumstances, for
very long at a time. Ted would be gone into fortune--into a fortune that
Oliver would have to be the last person on earth to grudge him--but that
meant the end of eight years of fighting mockery and friendship together
as surely as if those years were marbles and Elinor were dropping them
down a well. They could pick it up later--after Ted had been married a
year say--but it would have changed then, it wouldn't be the same.

Oliver smiled rather wryly. He wondered if that was at all like what Ted
might have thought when he and Nancy--But that wasn't comparable in the
least. But Nancy and he were different. _Nancy_--and with that, the pain
came so dazzlingly for a minute that Oliver had to shut his eyes to
bear it--and something that wasn't just stupidly rude had to be said to
Juliet Bellamy in answer to her loud clear question as to whether he was
falling asleep.

All up to and through Labor Day Oliver bluffed and manoeuvered like the
head of a small but vicious Balkan State in an International Congress
for Ted and Elinor, and towards tea-time, decided sardonically that it
was quite time his adopted infants took any further responsibilities off
his shoulders. There was no use delaying conclusions any longer--Oliver
felt as he looked at his victims like a workmanlike god who simply must
finish the rough draft of the particular wo