cial prestige which Selwyn's name had brought the firm, he had
patiently endured his personal dislike and contempt for the man after he
found he could do nothing with him in any way.

He had accepted Selwyn purely in the hope of social advantage, and with
the knowledge that Selwyn could have done much for him after business
hours; if not from friendship, at least from interest, or a lively sense
of benefits to come. For that reason he had invited him to participate
in the valuable Siowitha deal, supposing a man as comparatively poor as
Selwyn would not only jump at the opportunity, but also prove
sufficiently grateful later. And he had been amazed and disgusted at
Selwyn's attitude. But he had not supposed the man would sever his
connection with the firm if he, Neergard, went ahead on his own
responsibility. It astonished and irritated him; it meant, instead of
selfish or snobbish indifference to his own social ambitions, an enemy
to block his entrance into what he desired--the society of those made
notorious in the columns of the daily press.

For Neergard cared only for the notorious in the social scheme; nothing
else appealed to him. He had, all his life, read with avidity of the
extravagances, the ostentation, the luxurious effrontery, the thinly
veiled viciousness of what he believed to be society, and he craved it
from the first, working his thick hands to the bone in dogged
determination to one day participate in and satiate himself with the
easy morality of what he read about in his penny morning paper--in the
days when even a penny was to be carefully considered.

That was what he wanted from society--the best to be had in vice. That
was why he had denied himself in better days. It was for that he hoarded
every cent while actual want sharpened his wits and his thin nose; it
was in that hope that he received Selwyn so cordially as a possible
means of entrance into regions he could not attain unaided; it was for
that reason he was now binding Gerald to him through remission of
penalties for slackness, through loans and advances, through a
companionship which had already landed him in the Ruthven's card-room,
and promised even more from Mr. Fane, who had won his money very easily.

For Neergard did not care how he got in, front door or back door,
through kitchen or card-room, as long as he got in somehow. All he
desired was the chance to use opportunity in his own fashion, and wring
from the forbidden circle al