hal.
Haven't you noticed my ring was gone from her finger?"

"Gone? Bless my soul, no--that is, yes--maybe. I don't know. But--but
at any rate, I thought nothing of it. So then, you say--she's broken it
off? But, why? And when? And--and tell me, Wally, what's it all about?"

"Listen, and I _will_ tell you," Tiger answered. "And I'll give it to
you straight. I'm partly at fault. Mostly so, it may be. Let me assume
all the blame, at any rate. I'm not sparing myself and have no intention
of doing so. My conduct, I admit, was beastly. No excuses offered. All I
want to do, now, is to make the _amende honorable_, be forgiven, and
have the former status resumed."

Thus spoke Waldron. But all the time his soul lay hot within him, at
having so to humble himself before Flint; at being thus obliged to eat
crow, and fawn and feign and creep.

"If I didn't need your billion, old man," his secret thought was, as he
eyed Flint with pretended humility, "you might go to Hell, for all of
me--you and your daughter with you, damn you both!"

The Billionaire sat blinking, for a moment. Then, picking up a pencil
and idly scrawling pothooks on the big clean sheet of blotting-paper
that covered his reference-book table, beside which the men were
sitting, he asked:

"Well, what's the trouble all about? What are the facts? I must have
those, in full, before I can guarantee to do anything toward changing my
daughter's opinion. Much as I deplore her action, Wally, I don't know
whether she's right or wrong, till you tell me. Now, let's have it."

"I will," the other answered; and he was as good as his word. Realizing
the prime futility of any subterfuge, or any misstatement of
fact--which Catherine would surely discover and tell her father, and
which would react against him--Waldron began at the beginning and
narrated the entire affair, with every detail precisely accurate. Nay,
he even exaggerated the offensiveness of his conduct, at the Longmeadow
Club, and in various ways gave the Billionaire to understand that he was
a more serious offender than in truth he really was. For, after all, the
only real offense was the lack of any compatibility between the girl and
himself--the total absence of love.

Flint listened carefully and with a judicial expression. If he blamed
Waldron, he made no statement of that fact. A man himself, and one who
viewed man's weaknesses and woman's foibles with a cynic eye, he could
judge motives and weigh actions