the porter and stood
ruefully and self-consciously over the burly figure that had gone down
with a crash upon the pavement.

It was no use. Joan had been one too many for him. What, in any case,
was the good of trying to follow? She preferred Palgrave. She had no
use, at that moment, for home. She was bored at the mere idea of
talking things over. She was not serious. She refused to be faced up
with seriousness. She was like a precocious child who snapped her
fingers at authority and pursued the policy of the eel at the approach
of discipline. What had she cried out that night in the dark with her
chin tilted up and her arms thrown out? "I shall go joy-riding in that
huge round-about. If I can get anybody to pay my score, good. If not,
I'll pay it myself, whatever it costs. My motto's going to be 'A good
time as long as I can get it, and who cares for the price!'"

Martin helped the porter to his feet, stanched his flow of County Kerry
reproaches with a ten-dollar bill and went back into the Crystal Room.
He had gone there half an hour ago with a party of young people to kill
loneliness and forget a bad hour of despair. His friend, Howard
Oldershaw, who had breezed him out of the reading room of the Yale
Club, was one of the party. He was in the first flush of speed-breaking
and knew the town and its midnight haunts. He had offered to show
Martin the way to get rid of depression. Right! He should be put to the
test. Two could play the "Who cares?" game; and Martin, cut to the
quick, angry and resisted, would enter his name. Not again would he put
himself in the way of being laughed at and ridiculed and turned down,
teased and tantalized and made a fool of.

Patience and gentleness--to what end? He loved a will-o'-the-wisp; he
had married a butterfly. Why continue to play the martyr and follow the
fruitless path of rectitude? Hadn't she said, "I can only live once,
and so I shall make life spin whichever way I want it to go?" He could
only live once, and if life was not to spin with her, let it spin
without her. "Who cares?" he said to himself. "Who the devil cares?" He
gave up his coat and hat, and went back into that room of false joy and
syncopation.

It was one o'clock when he stood in the street once more, hot and wined
and careless. "Let's hit it up," he said to Oldershaw as the car moved
away with the sisters and cousins of the other two men. "I haven't
started yet."

The red-haired, roistering Oldershaw, n