n the man.
However, I was sorry--very sorry, to see his name on that card, and I
said as much to the group of men among whom I took my accustomed seat
in the club corner.

"Well, I'm sorry he's gone, but I never knew him at all," remarked
Chandler.

"I never met him either," said Paddock.

Hepburn had never heard of him, neither had Joline, and Grafton knew him
not.

I looked at the speakers. Was it possible I was as old as they seemed to
intimate?

"Delafield hasn't been regular at the club for many a long day," I
said--clinging to a straw. "I doubt if he's been inside the door for
five years--so it isn't very strange you haven't met. But you all know
of him. He was the Delafield of the Hawkins-Delafield affair."

The blank look on the faces of my companions surprised and, I admit,
shocked me. It was ridiculous, but Osborne's laugh grated, and I
welcomed Chandler's interrupting question, even though it pronounced
sentence on my senility.

"Yes--I'll tell you the story," I answered, "but after retailing to
members of this club something that was absolutely discussed to death
here, and labelling it a 'story,' I shall never address you again except
as 'my sons.'"

"Father, may I have a cigar?" asked Chandler, as he rang the bell.

I signed the check.

"Jack Delafield was a man of good family," I began, "but to vary the
conventional opening and adhere to the truth, I may as well say his
parents were honest though not poor. He was a fellow of many talents, so
many, in fact, that he became known as a 'versatile genius.' He never
attained a more notable title. Not that he hid his talents under a
napkin. He sealed their fate in a bottle--in many bottles. I'm afraid
we didn't do much to help him here. Everyone thought he'd come out all
right in the long run, and when he lost his money and settled down
seriously to the law, his friends supposed his wild oats had all been
sown. But somebody left him more money, and back he went to literature
and painting, and music. The old set welcomed him with open arms, but
didn't help him to write, or paint or practise. Then Miss--well, I won't
say what girl--put him on probation, and he wrote two really notable
stories before the probation was declared unsatisfactory. After that he
never seemed to care much about anything except art, and he took that
out in dreaming of the things he didn't do. Yet no one seemed to blame
him much, perhaps everybody liked him too well, and nobody