affectionately, "My own tainted money? Why, I'm devoted to it.
And I tell you this, Electra: if there's one scrap of it left when you
inherit, if you give it to your brotherhoods, I'll haunt you. As I'm a
living woman, you shan't have a chance. I'll make my will and Billy
Stark shall help me, and I'll leave it to that pretty girl, and she
shall buy ribbons with it. And--My heavens! but there's Billy Stark
now."

He was coming up the walk, and she flew to meet him in an ingenuous
happiness, half dramatic fervor to plague Electra, who, walking with
dignity, went out the other way.

Madam Fulton was laughing, at Electra, at life itself.

"Billy," said she, "I'd rather see you than all the heavenly hosts."

Billy took off his hat and wiped his forehead.

"I found I'd got things pretty well in order," he explained. "I thought
you wouldn't mind my coming sooner."

"Mind! I'm enchanted. Come along in and have cold drinks and things.
Bless me, Billy! how it does set me up to see you."

She led the way into the dining-room, and when no one answered the bell,
on into the kitchen for exploration in the icebox. She tiptoed about,
her pretty skirt caught under one arm, her high heels clicking. The pink
came into her cheeks. She had the spirit which is of no age. Then they
sat down together at the dining-table in the shaded calm, and while
Billy drank, she leaned her elbows on the table and, with the ice
clinking in her glass, drank and made merry. She might have been sixteen
and in a French cafe. Her spirits were seething, and she feared no
morrow.

"I never can let you go in the world, Billy," she said, out of her gay
candor.

He was instant with his gallant remedy.

"Come with me, then!"

"Sometimes"--she paused and watched him--"sometimes I almost think I
will."

William Stark was a tired man that day. He had been telephoning and
besieging men in their offices and talking business; he felt his age. It
was one of the days when it seemed to him that sacred business even was
less than nothing,--vanity,--and when he wondered, without interest, who
would spend the money he might make. He was plainly fagged, and here was
a gay creature of his own age, beguiled by the old perennial promises,
whom life had not yet convinced of its own insolvency. He wondered at
the youth of women, their appetite for pleasure, their inability to
realize when the game is done. There was the curtain slowly descending
between age and its ent