want to drink. There
were several things that he did not want. In particular he did not want
to be alone.

He rang, ordered out a car and went sailing in town, to a brown-stone
front where you could lose as much money as you liked and not in
solitude either. On the way, the thought of the damned and thumbless
Benny accompanied him.

XV

Through the inflated proprieties of social New York, Paliser's father
had driven four-in-hand, and at a pace so klinking that social New York
cut him dead. A lot he cared! The high-steppers in their showy harness
flung along as brazenly as before. He did not care. He had learned to
since. Age is instructive. It teaches that though a man defy the world,
he cannot ignore it. But tastes are inheritable. Monty Paliser came in
for a few, but not for the four-in-hand. Less vigorous than his father,
though perhaps more subtle, he preferred the tandem.

In preparation for one that he had in view, he looked in, not at a mart,
but at a shrine.

It was on the afternoon succeeding Cassy's visit to his slippery floor.
The day was radiant, a day not of spring, or of summer, but of both.
Above was a sky of silk wadded with films of white cotton. From below
there ascended a metallic roar, an odour of gasoline--the litanies and
incense of the temple, Semitic and Lampsacene, that New York long since
became.

Lampsacus worshipped a very great god and worshipped him uniquely. New
York, more devout and less narrow, has worshipped him also and has knelt
too to a god almost as great. Their combined rituals have exalted the
temple into a department-store where the pilgrim obtains anything he can
pay for, which is certainly a privilege. Youth, beauty, virtue, even
smiles, even graciousness, Priapus and Mammon bestow on the faithful
that garland the altars with cash.

In Park Avenue, on this radiant afternoon, Mrs. Austen and Paliser were
occupied with their devotions. Mrs. Austen was priestess and Paliser was
saying his prayers; that is, he was jingling his money, not audibly, but
none the less potently in the lady's uplifted eyes.

"Yes," said the lady, who as usual did not mean it. "It is too bad.
Margaret, the dear child, is so inexperienced that I feel that I must
blame myself. I have kept from her--how shall I put it? Well,
everything, and when she learned about this, I could not tell her that
it was all very usual. It would have offended her modesty too much."

Pausing, Mrs. Austen smil