ted of a surface," he managed at least to present those mystifying
ripples of personality which suggest to the imagination depths of
pleasantness as yet undiscovered. Adams had lived to his present age by
the help of few illusions--and he realised even now that the thing he
liked in Kemper was an effect of manner which implied an impossible
subtlety--that the power one saw in the man was produced simply by some
trick of pose, by a frankness so big that one felt intuitively there
must be still bigger qualities behind it. Whether it was all a bluster
of affectation Adams had never as yet decided in his own mind, but
there were moments when, in listening to stories of the masculine
freedom in which Kemper lived, he felt inclined to acknowledge that the
force, whatever it was, had spent itself in wind. In a profession the
man would inevitably have become a figure, he thought now with a touch
of friendly humor--in law or medicine he would have gone in for the
invincible "grand style," and the picturesqueness of his person would
have served to swell the number of his clients. It was a shabby turn of
fortune, Adams admitted, which in supplying Kemper with a too liberal
bank account, had made of him at the same time a driver of racing motor
cars instead of the ornament of a more distinguished field. There were
compensations doubtless, and he wondered if in this instance they had
centred in the fascinations of an operatic Juliet?

Upon reaching his office he found that he was late for an interview he
had appointed with a famous Russian revolutionist, who had promised him
an article for the _Review_. It was the time of the month when they were
making up the forthcoming number, and he was kept late over a discussion
of the leading paper, which, owing to the sudden death of a literary
personage of distinction, he had been compelled to replace at the last
moment.

His office was a small, dingy room on the eighth floor of a building in
Union Square, and his privacy was guarded by the desks of his
secretaries placed directly beyond the threshold. These assistants were
young men of considerable promise, he liked to think--college graduates
and temperamental hero-worshippers, who adored him with an ardour which
he found at once disconcerting and ridiculous. He had been used,
however, to so little personal appreciation in his life that he had
grown of late to look forward, with pathetic eagerness, to the hearty
morning greeting of his f