d out the door.

"It's all over," he muttered brokenly as he tried to jam his car
into first. "It's all over--if I have to choke you for an hour, darn
you!" This last to the car, which had been standing some time and
was quite cold.

He drove downtown--that is, he got into a snow rut that led him
downtown.

He sat slouched down very low in his seat, much too dispirited to
care where he went. He was living over the next twenty years without
Betty.

In front of the Clarendon Hotel he was hailed from the sidewalk by a
bad man named Baily, who had big huge teeth and lived at the hotel
and had never been in love.

"Perry," said the bad man softly when the roadster drew up beside
him at the curb, "I've got six quarts of the dog-gonedest champagne
you ever tasted. A third of it's yours, Perry, if you'll come
upstairs and help Martin Macy and me drink it."

"Baily," said Perry tensely. "I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink
every drop of it. I don't care if it kills me. I don't care if it's
fifty-proof wood alcohol."

"Shut up, you nut!" said the bad man gently. "They don't put wood
alcohol in champagne. This is the stuff that proves the world is
more than six thousand years old. It's so ancient that the cork is
petrified. You have to pull it with a stone drill."

"Take me upstairs," said Perry moodily. "If that cork sees my heart
it'll fall out from pure mortification."

The room upstairs was full of those innocent hotel pictures of
little girls eating apples and sitting in swings and talking to dogs.
The other decorations were neckties and a pink man reading a pink
paper devoted to ladies in pink tights.

"When you have to go into the highways and byways--" said the pink
man, looking reproachfully at Baily and Perry.

"Hello, Martin Macy," said Perry shortly, "where's this stone-age
champagne?"

"What's the rush? This isn't an operation, understand. This is a
party."

Perry sat down dully and looked disapprovingly at all the neckties.

Baily leisurely opened the door of a wardrobe and brought out six
wicked-looking bottles and three glasses.

"Take off that darn fur coat!" said Martin Macy to Perry. "Or maybe
you'd like to have us open all the windows." "Give me champagne,"
said Perry.

"Going to the Townsends' circus ball to-night?"

"Am not!"

"'Vited?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why not go?"

"Oh, I'm sick of parties," exclaimed Perry, "I'm sick of 'em. I've
been to so many that I'm sick of 'em."

"Mayb