he white-headed butler who had
always personally served him, and who served him now, all hesitated and
gazed curiously at him. He paid no attention at the time but remembered
it afterward.

For an hour he sat alone in the vast empty room before a fire of English
cannel coal, taking his hot whiskey and lemon in slow, absent-minded
gulps. Patches of deep colour lay flat under his cheek-bones, his sunken
abstracted eyes never left the coals.

The painted gaze of dead Presidents and Governors looked down at him
from their old-time frames ranged in stately ranks along the oaken
wainscot. Over the mantel the amazing, Hebraic countenance of a moose
leered at him out of little sly, sardonic little eyes, almost bantering
in their evil immobility.

He had presented the trophy to the club after a trip somewhere, leaving
the impression that he had shot it. He seldom looked at it, never at the
silver-engraved inscription on the walnut shield.

Strangely enough, now as he sat there, he thought of the trophy and
looked up at it; and for the first time in his life read the
inscription.

It made no visible impression upon him except that for a brief moment
the small and vivid patches of colour in his wasted cheeks faintly
tinted the general pallor. But this died out as soon as it appeared; he
drank deliberately, set the hot glass on a table at his elbow, long,
bony fingers still retaining a grip upon it.

And into his unconcentrated thoughts, strangely enough, came the
memories of little meannesses which he had committed--trivial things
that he supposed he had forgotten long ago; and at first, annoyed, he
let memory drift.

But, imperceptibly, from the shallows of these little long-forgotten
meannesses, memory drifted uncontrolled into deeper currents; and,
disdainful, he made no effort to control it; and later, could not. And
for the first time in his life he took the trouble to understand the
reason of his unpopularity among men. He had cared nothing for them.

He cared nothing for them now, unless that half tolerant, half
disdainful companionship of years with Delancy Grandcourt could be
called caring for a man. If their relations ever had been anything more
than a habit he did not know; on what their friendship had ever been
founded he could not tell. It had been his habit to take from Delancy,
accept, or help himself. He had helped himself to Rosalie Dene; and not
long ago he had accepted all that Delancy offered, almost