cynical seniors, and would rather have had him penniless and present
than absent and opulent.

But they were young and foolish, and after a while they forgot to miss
him, particularly Gladys, whose mother had asked her not to dance quite
so often with Gerald, and to favour him a trifle less frequently in
cotillon. Which prevoyance had been coped with successfully by Nina,
who, noticing it, at first took merely a perverse pleasure in foiling
Mrs. Orchil; but afterward, as the affair became noticeable, animated by
the instinct of the truly clever opportunist, she gave Gerald every
fighting chance. Whatever came of it--and, no doubt, the Orchils had
more ambitious views for Gladys--it was well to have Gerald mentioned in
such a fashionable episode, whether anything came of it or not.

Gerald, in the early days of his affair with Gladys, and before even it
had assumed the proportions of an affair, had shyly come to Selwyn, not
for confession but with the crafty purpose of introducing her name into
the conversation so that he might have the luxury of talking about her
to somebody who would neither quiz him nor suspect him.

Selwyn, of course, ultimately suspected him; but as he never quizzed
him, Gerald continued his elaborate system of subterfuges to make her
personality and doings a topic for him to expand upon and Selwyn to
listen to.

It had amused Selwyn; he thought of it now--a gay memory like a ray of
light flung for a moment across the sombre background of his own
sadness. Fortunate or unfortunate, Gerald was still lucky in his freedom
to hazard it with chance and fate.

Freedom to love! That alone was blessed, though that love be unreturned.
Without that right--the right to love--a man was no man. Lansing had
been correct: such a man was a spectre in a living world--the ghost of
what he had been. But there was no help for it, and there Lansing had
been in the wrong. No hope, no help, nothing for it but to set a true
course and hang to it.

And Selwyn's dull eyes rested upon the ashes of the fire, and he saw his
dead youth among them; and, in the flames, his maturity burning to
embers.

If he outlived Alixe, his life would lie as the ashes lay at his feet.
If she outlived him--and they had told him there was every chance of
it--at least he would have something to busy himself with in life if he
was to leave her provided for when he was no longer there to stand
between her and charity.

That meant work--th