with the grimmest and most depressing matters,
but he himself was always agreeable, and he insisted upon high
cheerfulness as the correct tone of human intercourse.

Wanning rose and turned to go. There was, in Harold, simply no
reality, to which one could break through. The young man took up his
hat and gloves.

"Must you go? Let me step along with you to the sub. The walk will
do me good."

Harold talked agreeably all the way to Astor Place. His father heard
little of what he said, but he rather liked his company and his wish
to be pleasant.

Wanning went to his club for luncheon, meaning to spend the
afternoon with some of his friends who had retired from business and
who read the papers there in the empty hours between two and seven.
He got no satisfaction, however. When he tried to tell these men of
his present predicament, they began to describe ills of their own in
which he could not feel interested. Each one of them had a
treacherous organ of which he spoke with animation, almost with
pride, as if it were a crafty business competitor whom he was
constantly outwitting. Each had a doctor, too, for whom he was
ardently soliciting business. They wanted either to telephone their
doctor and make an appointment for Wanning, or to take him then and
there to the consulting room. When he did not accept these
invitations, they lost interest in him and remembered engagements.
He called a taxi and returned to the offices of McQuiston, Wade, and
Wanning.

Settled at his desk, Wanning decided that he would not go home to
dinner, but would stay at the office and dictate a long letter to an
old college friend who lived in Wyoming. He could tell Douglas Brown
things that he had not succeeded in getting to any one else. Brown,
out in the Wind River mountains, couldn't defend himself, couldn't
slap Wanning on the back and tell him to gather up the sunbeams.

He called up his house in Orange to say that he would not be home
until late. Roma answered the telephone. He spoke mournfully, but
she was not disturbed by it.

"Very well, Father. Don't get too tired," she said in her well
modulated voice.

When Wanning was ready to dictate his letter, he looked out from his
private office into the reception room and saw that his stenographer
in her hat and gloves, and furs of the newest cut, was just leaving.

"Goodnight, Mr. Wanning," she said, drawing down her dotted veil.

Had there been important business letters to be got