silence concerning business pursuits was instinctive; neither father nor
son understood the other's affairs, nor were they interested except in
the success of a good comrade.

It was inevitable that, in years to come, the realisation of his loss
would become keener and deeper; but now, in the reaction from shock, and
in the anxiety and stress and dire necessity for activity, only the
surface sorrow was understood--the pity of it, the distressing
circumstances surrounding the death of a good father, a good friend, and
a personally upright man.

The funeral was private; only the immediate family attended. Duane had
written to Geraldine, Kathleen, and Scott not to come, and he had also
asked if he might not go to them when the chance arrived.

And now the chance had come at last, in the dead of winter; but the
prospect of escape to Geraldine brightened the whole world for him and
gilded the snowy streets of the city with that magic radiance no
flaming planet ever cast.

He had already shipped a crate of canvases to Roya-Neh; his trunk had
gone, and now, checking with an amused shrug a natural impulse to hail a
cab, he swung his suit-case and himself aboard a car, bound for the
Patroons Club, where he meant to lunch before taking the train for
Roya-Neh.

He had not been to the club since the catastrophe and his father's
death, and he was very serious and sombre and slightly embarrassed when
he entered.

A servant took his coat and suit-case with marked but subdued respect.
Men whom he knew and some men whom he scarcely knew at all made it a
point to speak to him or bow to him with a cordiality too pointed not to
affect him, because in it he recognised the acceptance of what he had
fought for--the verdict that publicly exonerated his father from
anything worse than a bad but honest mistake.

For a second or two he stood in the great marble rotunda looking around
him. In that club familiar figures were lacking--men whose social and
financial position only a few months before seemed impregnable, men who
had gone down in ruin, one or two who had perished by their own hand,
several whose physical and financial stamina had been shattered at the
same terrible moment. Some were ill, some dead, some had resigned,
others had been forced to write their resignations--such men as Dysart
for example, and James Skelton, now in prison, unable to furnish bail.

But the Patroons was a club of men above the average; a number among