And terrible and vile as were the sources from which the fortunes
had been derived, they were no viler nor more terrible than the
purposes for which they had been spent. Mrs. Vivie Patton had hinted
to Montague of a "Decameron Club," whose members gathered in each
others' homes and vied in the telling of obscene stories; Strathcona
had told him about another set of exquisite ladies and gentlemen who
gave elaborate entertainments, in which they dressed in the costumes
of bygone periods, and imitated famous characters in history, and
the vices and orgies of courts and camps. One heard of "Cleopatra
nights" on board of yachts at Newport. There was a certain Wall
Street "plunger," who had begun life as a mining man in the West;
and when his customers came in town, he would hire a trolley-car,
and take a load of champagne and half a dozen prostitutes, and spend
the night careering about the country. This man was now quartered in
one of the great hotels in New York; and in his apartments he would
have prize fights and chicken fights; and bloodthirsty exhibitions
called "purring matches," in which men tried to bark each other's
shins; or perhaps a "battle royal," with a diamond scarf-pin
dangling from the ceiling, and half a dozen negroes in a
free-for-all fight for the prize.

No picture of the ways of the Metropolis would be complete which did
not force upon the reluctant reader some realization of the extent
to which new and hideous incitements to vice were spreading. To say
that among the leisured classes such practices were raging like a
pestilence would be no exaggeration. Ten years ago they were
regarded with aversion by even the professionally vicious; but now
the commonest prostitute accepted them as part of her fate. And
there was no height to which they had not reached--ministers of
state were enslaved by them; great fortunes and public events were
controlled by them. In Washington there had been an ambassador whose
natural daughter taught them in the houses of the great, until the
scandal forced the minister's recall. Some of these practices were
terrible in their effects, completely wrecking the victim in a short
time; and physicians who studied their symptoms would be horrified
to see them appearing in the homes of their friends.

And from New York, the centre of the wealth and culture of the
country, these vices spread to every corner of it. Theatrical
companies and travelling salesmen carried them; visiting merchants
and sightseers acquired them. Pack-pedlers sold vile pictures and
books--the manufacturing or importing of which was now quite an
industry; one might read catalogues printed abroad in English, the
contents of which would make one's flesh creep. There were cheap
weeklies, costing ten cents a year, which were thrust into
area-windows for servant-girls; there were yellow-covered French
novels of unbelievable depravity for the mistress of the house. It
was a curious commentary upon the morals of Society that upon the
trains running to a certain suburban community frequented by the
ultra-fashionable, the newsboys did a thriving business in such
literature; and when the pastor of the fashionable church eloped
with a Society girl, the bishop publicly laid the blame to the
morals of his parishioners!

The theory was that there were two worlds, and that they were kept
rigidly separate. There were two sets of women; one to be toyed with
and flung aside, and the other to be protected and esteemed. Such
things as prostitutes and kept women might exist, but people of
refinement did not talk about them, and were not concerned with
them. But Montague was familiar with the saying, that if you follow
the chain of the slave, you will find the other end about the wrist
of the master; and he discovered that the Tenderloin was wreaking
its vengeance upon Fifth Avenue. It was not merely that the men of
wealth were carrying to their wives and children the diseases of
vice; they were carrying also the manners and the ideals.

Montague had been amazed by the things he had found in New York
Society; the smoking and drinking and gambling of women, their hard
and cynical views of life, their continual telling of coarse
stories. And here, in this under-world, he had come upon the
fountain head of the corruption. It was something which came to him
in a sudden flash of intuition;--the barriers between the two worlds
were breaking down!

He could picture the process in a hundred different forms. There was
Betty Wyman. His brother had meant to take her to the theatre, to
let her see Rosalie, by way of a joke! So, of course, Betty knew of
his escapades, and of those of his set; she and her girl friends
were whispering and jesting about them. Hero sat Oliver, smiling and
cynical, toying with Rosalie as a cat might toy with a mouse; and
to-morrow he would be with Betty--and could anyone doubt any longer
whence Betty had derived her attitude towards life? And the habits
of mind that Oliver had taught her as a girl she would not forget as
a wife; he might be anxious to keep her to himself, but there would
be others whose interest was different.

And Montague recalled other things that he had seen or heard in.
Society, that he could put his finger upon, as having come out of
this under-world. Tho more he thought of the explanation, the more
it seemed to explain. This "Society," which had perplexed him--now
he could describe it: its manners and ideals of life were those
which he would have expected to find in the "fast" side of stage
life.

It was, of course, the women who made Society, and gave it its tone;
and the women of Society were actresses. They were actresses in
their love of notoriety and display; in their taste in clothes and
jewels, their fondness for cigarettes and champagne. They made up
like actresses; they talked and thought like actresses. The only
obvious difference was that the women of the stage were carefully
selected--were at least up to a certain standard of physical
excellence; whereas the women of Society were not selected at all,
and some were lean, and some were stout, and some were painfully
homely.

Montague recalled cases where the two sets had met as at some of the
private entertainments. It was getting to be the fashion to hobnob
with the stage people on such occasions; and he recalled how
naturally the younger people took to this. Only the older women held
aloof; looking down upon the women of the stage from an ineffable
height, as belonging to a lower caste--because they were obliged to
work for their livings. But it seemed to Montague, as he sat and
talked with this poor chorus-girl, who had sold herself for a little
pleasure, that it was easier to pardon her than the woman who had
been born to luxury, and scorned those who produced her wealth.

But most of all, one's sympathies went out to a person who was not
to be met in either of these sets; to the girl who had not sold
herself, but was struggling for a living in the midst of this
ravening corruption. There were thousands of self-respecting women,
even on the stage; Toodles herself had been among them, she told
Montague. "I kept straight for a long time," she said, laughing
cheerfully--"and on ten dollars a week! I used to go out on the
road, and then they paid me sixteen; and think of trying to live on
one-night stands--to board yourself and stop at hotels and dress for
the theatre--on sixteen a week, and no job half the year! And all
that time--do you know Cyril Chambers, the famous church painter?"

"I've heard of him," said Montague.

"Well, I was with a show here on Broadway the next winter; and every
night for six months he sent me a bunch of orchids that couldn't
have cost less than seventy-five dollars! And he told me he'd open
accounts for me in all the stores I chose, if I'd spend the next
summer in Europe with him. He said I could take my mother or my
sister with me--and I was so green in those days, I thought that
must mean he didn't intend anything wrong!"

Toodles smiled at the memory. "Did you go?" asked the man.

"No," she answered. "I stayed here with a roof-garden show that
failed. And I went to my old manager for a job, and he said to me,
'I can only pay you ten a week. But why are you so foolish?' 'How do
you mean?' I asked; and he answered, 'Why don't you get a rich
sweetheart? Then I could pay you sixty.' That's what a girl hears on
the stage!"

"I don't understand," said Montague, perplexed. "Did he mean he
could get money out of the man?"

"Not directly," said Toodles; "but tickets--and advertising. Why,
men will hire front-row seats for a whole season, if they're
interested in a girl in the show. And they'll take all their friends
to see her, and she'll be talked about--she'll be somebody, instead
of just nobody, as I was."

"Then it actually helps her on the stage!" said Montague.

"Helps her!" exclaimed Toodles. "My God! I've known a girl who'd
been abroad with a tip-top swell--and had the gowns and the jewels
to prove it--to come home and get into the front row of a chorus at
a hundred dollars a week."

Toodles was cheerful and all unaware; and that only made the tragedy
of it all one shade more black to Montague. He sat lost in sombre
reverie, forgetting his companions, and the blare and glare of the
place.

In the centre of this dining-room was a great cone-shaped stand,
containing a display of food; and as they strolled out, Montague
stopped to look at it. There were platters garnished with flowers
and herbs, and containing roast turkeys and baked hams, jellied
meats and game in aspic, puddings and tarts and frosted cakes--every
kind of food-fantasticality imaginable. One might have spent an hour
in studying it, and from top to bottom he would have found nothing
simple, nothing natural. The turkeys had paper curls and rosettes
stuck over them; the hams were covered with a white gelatine, the
devilled crabs with a yellow mayonnaise-and all painted over in pink
and green and black with landscapes and marine views--with "ships
and shoes and sealing-wax and cabbages and kings." The jellied meats
and the puddings were in the shape of fruits and flowers; and there
were elaborate works of art in pink and white confectionery--a
barn-yard, for instance, with horses and cows, and a pump, and a
dairymaid--and one or two alligators.

And all this was changed every day! Each morning you might see a
procession of a score of waiters bearing aloft a new supply.
Montague remembered Betty Wyman's remark at their first interview,
apropos of the whipped cream made into little curleques; how his
brother had said, "If Allan were here, he'd be thinking about the
man who fixed that cream, and how long it took him, and how he might
have been reading 'The Simple Life'!"

He thought of that now; he stood here and gazed, and wondered about
all the slaves of the lamp who served in this huge temple of luxury.
He looked at the waiters--pale, hollow-chested, harried-looking men:
he imagined the hordes of servants of yet lower kinds, who never
emerged into the light of day; the men who washed the dishes, the
men who carried the garbage, the men who shovelled the coal into the
furnaces, and made the heat and light and power. Pent up in dim
cellars, many stories under ground, and bound for ever to the
service of sensuality--how terrible must be their fate, how
unimaginable their corruption! And they were foreigners; they had
come here seeking liberty. And the masters of the new country had
seized them and pent them here!

From this as a starting-point his thought went on, to the hordes of
toilers in every part of the world, whose fate it was to create the
things which these blind revellers destroyed; the women and children
in countless mills and sweatshops, who spun the cloth, and cut and
sewed it; the girls who made the artificial flowers, who rolled the
cigarettes, who gathered the grapes from the vines; the miners who
dug the coal and the precious metals out of the earth; the men who
watched in ten thousand signal-towers and engines, who fought the
elements from the decks of ten thousand ships--to bring all these
things here to be destroyed. Step by step, as the flood of
extravagance rose, and the energies of the men were turned to the
creation of futility and corruption--so, step by step, increased the
misery and degradation of all these slaves of Mammon. And who could
imagine what they would think about it--if ever they came to think?

--And then, in a sudden flash, there came back to Montague that
speech he had heard upon the street-corner, the first evening he had
been in New York! He could hear again the pounding of the elevated
trains, and the shrill voice of the orator; he could see his haggard
and hungry face, and the dense crowd gazing up at him. And there
came to him the words of Major Thorne:

"It means another civil war!"






CHAPTER XXI





Alice had been gone for a couple of weeks, and the day was drawing
near when the Hasbrook case came up for trial. The Saturday before
that being the date of the Mi-careme dance of the Long Island Hunt
Club, Siegfried Harvey was to have a house-party for the week-end,
and Montague accepted his invitation. He had been working hard,
putting the finishing touches to his brief, and he thought that a
rest would be good for him.

He and his brother went down upon Friday afternoon, and the first
person he met was Betty Wyman, whom he had not seen for quite a
while. Betty had much to say, and said it. As Montague had not been
seen with Mrs. Winnie since the episode in her house, people had
begun to notice the break, and there was no end of gossip; and
Mistress Betty wanted to know all about it, and how things stood
between them.

But he would not tell her, and so she saucily refused to tell him
what she had heard. All the while they talked she was eyeing him
quizzically, and it was evident that she took the worst for granted;
also that he had become a much more interesting person to her
because of it. Montague had the strangest sensatibns when he was
talking with Betty Wyman; she was delicious and appealing, almost
irresistible; and yet her views of life were so old! "I told you you
wouldn't do for a tame cat!" she said to him.

Then she went on to talk to him about his case, and to tease him
about the disturbance he had made.

"You know," she said, "Ollie and I were in terror--we thought that
grandfather would be furious, and that we'd be ruined. But somehow,
it didn't work out that way. Don't you say anything about it, but
I've had a sort of a fancy that he must be on your side of the
fence."

"I'd be glad to know it," said Montague, with a laugh--"I've been
trying for a long time to find out who is on my side of the fence."

"He was talking about it the other day," said Betty, "and I heard
him tell a man that he'd read your argument, and thought it was
good."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Montague.

"So was I," replied she. "And I said to him afterward, 'I suppose
you don't know that Allan Montague is my Ollie's brother.' And he
did you the honour to say that he hadn't supposed any member of
Ollie's family could have as much sense!"

Betty was staying with an aunt near by, and she went back before
dinner. In the automobile which came for her was old Wyman himself,
on his way home from the city; and as a snowstorm had begun, he came
in and stood by the fire while his car was exchanged for a closed
one from Harvey's stables. Montague did not meet him, but stood and
watched him from the shadows-a mite of a man, with a keen and eager
face, full of wrinkles. It was hard to realize that this little body
held one of the great driving minds of the country. He was an
intensely nervous and irritable man, bitter and implacable--by all
odds the most hated and feared man in Wall Street. He was swift,
imperious, savage as a hornet. "Directors at meetings that I attend
vote first and discuss afterward," was one of his sayings that
Montague had heard quoted. Watching him here by the fireside,
rubbing his hands and chatting pleasantly, Montague had a sudden
sense of being behind the scenes, of being admitted to a privilege
denied to ordinary mortals--the beholding of royalty in everyday
attire!

After dinner that evening Montague had a chat in the smoking-room
with his host; and he brought up the subject of the Hasbrook case,
and told about his trip to Washington, and his interview with Judge
Ellis.

Harvey also had something to communicate. "I had a talk with Freddie
Vandam about it," said he.

"What did he say?" asked Montague.

"Well," replied the other, with a laugh, "he's indignant, needless
to say. You know, Freddie was brought up by his father to regard the
Fidelity as his property, in a way. He always refers to it as 'my
company.' And he's very high and mighty about it--it's a personal
affront if anyone attacks it. But it was evident to me that he
doesn't know who's behind this case."

"Did he know about Ellis?" asked Montague.

"Yes," said the other, "he had found out that much. It was he who
told me that originally. He says that Ellis has been sponging off
the company for years--he has a big salary that he never earns, and
has borrowed something like a quarter of a million dollars on
worthless securities."

Montague gave a gasp.

"Yes," laughed Harvey. "But after all, that's a little matter. The
trouble with Freddie Vandam is that that sort of thing is all he
sees; and so he'll never be able to make out the mystery. He knows
that this clique or that in the company is plotting to get some
advantage, or to use him for their purposes--but he never realizes
how the big men are pulling the wires behind the scenes. Some day
they'll throw him overboard altogether, and then he'll realize how
they've played with him. That's what this Hasbrook case means, you
know--they simply want to frighten him with a threat of getting the
company's affairs into the courts and the newspapers."

Montague sat for a while in deep thought.

"What would you think would be Wyman's relation to the matter?" he
asked, at last.

"I wouldn't know," said Harvey. "He's supposed to be Freddie's
backer--but what can you tell in such a tangle?"

"It is certainly a mess," said Montague.

"There's no bottom to it," said the other. "Absolutely--it would
take your breath away! Just listen to what Vandain told me to-day!"

And then Harvey named one of the directors of the Fidelity who was
well known as a philanthropist. Having heard that the wife of one of
his junior partners had met with an accident in childbirth, and that
the doctor had told her husband that if she ever had another child,
she would die, this man had asked, "Why don't you have her life
insured?" The other replied that he had tried, and the companies had
refused her. "I'll fix it for you," said he; and so they put in
another application, and the director came to Freddie Vandam and had
the policy put through "by executive order." Seven months later the
woman died, and the Fidelity had paid her husband in full--a hundred
thousand or two!

"That's what's going on in the insurance world!" said Siegfried
Harvey.

And that was the story which Montague took with him to add to his
enjoyment of the festivities at the country club. It was a very
gorgeous affair; but perhaps the sombreness of his thoughts was to
blame; the flowers and music and beautiful gowns failed entirely in
their appeal, and he saw only the gluttony and drunkenness--more of
it than ever before, it seemed to him.

Then, too, he had an unpleasant experience. He met Laura Hegan; and
presuming upon her cordial reception of his visit, he went up and
spoke to her pleasantly. And she greeted him with frigid politeness;
she was so brief in her remarks and turned away so abruptly as
almost to snub him. He went away quite bewildered. But later on he
recalled the gossip about himself and Mrs. Winnie, and he guessed
that that was the explanation of Miss Hegar's action.

The episode threw a shadow over his whole visit. On Sunday he went
out into the country and tramped through a snowstorm by himself,
filled with a sense of disgust for all the past, and of foreboding
for the future. He hated this money-world, in which all that was
worst in human beings was brought to the surface; he hated it, and
wished that he had never set foot within its bounds. It was only by
tramping until he was too tired to feel anything that he was able to
master himself.

--And then, toward dark, he came back, and found a telegram which
had been forwarded from New York.

"Meet me at the Penna depot, Jersey City, at nine to-night. Alice."

This message, of course, drove all other thoughts from his mind. He
had no time even to tell Oliver about it--he had to jump into an
automobile and rush to catch the next train for the city. And all
through the long, cold ride in ferry-boats and cabs he pondered this
mystery. Alice's party had not been expected for two weeks yet; and
only two days before there had come a letter from Los Angeles,
saying that they would probably be a week over time. And here she
was home again!

He found there was an express from the West due at the hour named;
apparently, therefore, Alice had not come in the Prentice's train at
all. The express was half an hour late, and so he paced up and down
the platform, controlling his impatience as best he could. And
finally the long train pulled in, and he saw Alice coming down the
platform. She was alone!

"What does it mean?" were the first words he said to her.

"It's a long story," she answered. "I wanted to come home.";

"You mean you've come all the way from the coast by yourself!" he
gasped.

"Yes," she said, "all the way."

"What in the world--" he began.

"I can't tell you here, Allan," she said. "Wait till we get to some
quiet place."

"But," he persisted. "The Prentice? They let you come home alone?"

"They didn't know it," she said. "I ran away."

He was more bewildered than ever. But as he started to ask more
questions, she laid a hand upon his arm. "Please wait, Allan," she
said. "It upsets me to talk about it. It was Charlie Carter."

And so the light broke. He caught his breath and gasped, "Oh!"

He said not another word until they had crossed the ferry and
settled themselves in a cab, and started. "Now," he said, "tell me."

Alice began. "I was very much upset," she said. "But you must
understand, Allan, that I've had nearly a week to think it over, and
I don't mind it now. So I want you please not to get excited about
it; it wasn't poor Charlie's fault--he can't help himself. It was my
mistake. I ought to have taken your advice and had nothing to do
with him."

"Go on," said he; and Alice told her story.

The party had gone sight-seeing, and she had had a headache and had
stayed in the car. And Charlie Carter had come and begun making love
to her. "He had asked me to marry him already--that was at the
beginning of the trip," she said. "And I told him no. After that he
would never let me alone. And this time he went on in a terrible
way--he flung himself down on his knees, and wept, and said he
couldn't live without me. And nothing I could say did any good. At
last he--he caught hold of me--and he wouldn't let me go. I was
furious with him, and frightened. I had to threaten to call for help
before he would stop. And so--you see how it was."

"I see," said Montague, gravely. "Go on."

"Well, after that I made up my mind that I couldn't stay anywhere
where I had to see him. And I knew he would never go away without a
scene. If I had asked Mrs. Prentice to send him away, there would
have been a scandal, and it would have spoiled everybody's trip. So
I went out, and found there was a train for the East in a little
while, and I packed up my things, and left a note for Mrs. Prentice.
I told her a story--I said I'd had a telegram that your mother was
ill, and that I didn't want to spoil their good time, and had gone
by myself. That was the best thing I could think of. I wasn't afraid
to travel, so long as I was sure that Charlie couldn't catch up with
me."

Montague said nothing; he sat with his hands gripped tightly.

"It seemed like a desperate thing to do," said Alice, nervously.
"But you see, I was upset and unhappy. I didn't seem to like the
party any more--I wanted to be home. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Montague, "I understand. And I'm glad you are here."

They reached home, and Montague called up Harvey's and told his
brother what had happened. He could hear Oliver gasp with
astonishment. "That's a pretty how-do-you-do!" he said, when he had
got his breath back; and then he added, with a laugh, "I suppose
that settles poor Charlie's chances."

"I'm glad you've come to that conclusion," said the other, as he
hung up the receiver.

This episode gave Montague quite a shock. But he had little time to
think about it--the next morning at eleven o'clock his case was to
come up for trial, and so all his thoughts were called away. This
case had been the one real interest of his life for the last three
months; it was his purpose, the thing for the sake of which he
endured everything else that repelled him. And he had trained
himself as an athlete for a great race; he was in form, and ready
for the effort of his life. He went down town that morning with
every fibre of him, body and mind, alert and eager; and he went into
his office, and in his mail was a letter from Mr. Hasbrook. He
opened it hastily and read a message, brief and direct and decisive
as a sword-thrust:

"I beg to inform you that I have received a satisfactory proposition
from the Fidelity Company. I have settled with them, and wish to
withdraw the suit. Thanking you for your services, I remain,
sincerely."

To Montague the thing came like a thunderbolt. He sat utterly
dumbfounded--his hands went limp, and the letter fell upon the desk
in front of him.

And at last, when he did move, he picked up the telephone, and told
his secretary to call up Mr. Hasbrook. Then he sat waiting; and when
the bell rang, picked up the receiver, expecting to hear Mr.
Hasbrook's voice, and to demand an explanation. But he heard,
instead, the voice of his own secretary: "Central says the number's
been discontinued, sir."

And he hung up the receiver, and sat motionless again. The dummy had
disappeared!

To Montague this incident meant a change in the prospect of his
whole life. It was the collapse of all his hopes. He had nothing
more to work for, nothing more to think about; the bottom had fallen
out of his career!

He was burning with a sense of outrage. He had been tricked and made
a fool of; he had been used and flung aside. And now there was
nothing he could do--he was utterly helpless. What affected him
most was his sense of the overwhelming magnitude of the powers which
had made him their puppet; of the utter futility of the efforts that
he or any other man could make against them. They were like
elemental, cosmic forces; they held all the world in their grip, and
a common man was as much at their mercy as a bit of chaff in a
tempest.

All day long he sat in his office, brooding and nursing his wrath.
He had moods when he wished to drop everything, to shake the dust of
the city from his feet, and go back home and recollect what it was
to be a gentleman. And then again he had righting moods, when he
wished to devote all his life to punishing the men who had made use
of him. He would get hold of some other policy-holder in the
Fidelity, one whom he could trust; he would take the case without
pay, and carry it through to the end! He would force the newspapers
to talk about it--he would force the people to heed what he said!

And then, toward evening, he went homo, bitter and sore. And there
was his brother sitting in his study, waiting for him.

"Hello," he said, and took off his coat, preparing his mind for one
more ignominy--the telling of his misfortune to Oliver, and
listening to his inevitable, "I told you so."

But Oliver himself had something to communicate something that would
not bear keeping. He broke out at once--"Tell me, Allan! What in the
world has happened between you and Mrs. Winnie?"

"What do you mean?" asked Montague, sharply.

"Why," said Oliver, "everybody is talking about some kind of a
quarrel."

"There has been no quarrel," said Montague.

"Well, what is it, then?"

"It's nothing."

"It must be something!" exclaimed Oliver. "What do all the stories
mean?"

"What stories?"

"About you two. I met Mrs. Vivie Patton just now, and she swore me
to secrecy, and told me that Mrs. Winnie had told some one that you
had made love to her so outrageously that she had to ask you to
leave the house."

Montague shrunk as from a blow. "Oh!" he gasped.

"That's what she said," said he.

"It's a lie!" he cried.

"That's what I told Mrs. Vivie," said the other; "it doesn't sound
like you--"

Montague had flushed scarlet. "I don't mean that!" he cried. "I mean
that Mrs. Winnie never said any such thing."

"Oh," said Oliver, and he shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe not,"
he added. "But I know she's furious with you about
something--everybody's talking about it. She tells people that
she'll never speak to you again. And what I want to know is,
why is it that you have to do things to make enemies of
everybody you know?"

Montague said nothing; he was trembling with anger.

"What in the world did you do to her?" began the other. "Can't you
trust me---"

And suddenly Montague sprang to his feet. "Oh, Oliver," he
exclaimed, "let me alone! Go away!"

And he went into the next room and slammed the door, and began
pacing back and forth like a caged animal.

It was a lie! It was a lie! Mrs. Winnie had never said such a thing!
He would never believe it--it was a nasty piece of backstairs
gossip!

But then a new burst of rage swept over him What did it matter
Whether it was true or not--whether anything was true or not? What
did it matter if anybody had done all the hideous and loathsome
things that everybody else said they had done? It was what everybody
was saying! It was what everybody believed--what everybody was
interested in! It was the measure of a whole society--their ideals
and their standards! It was the way they spent their time, repeating
nasty scandals about each other; living in an atmosphere of
suspicion and cynicism, with endless whispering and leering, and
gossip of lew intrigue.

A flood of rage surged up within him, and swept him, away--rage
against the world into which he had come, and against himself for
the part he had played in it. Everything seemed to have come to a
head at once; and he hated everything--hated the people he had met,
and the things they did, and the things they had tempted him to do.
He hated the way he had got his money, and the way he had spent it.
He hated the idleness and wastefulness, the drunkenness and
debauchery, the meanness and the snobbishneps.

And suddenly he turned and flung open the door of the room where
Oliver still sat. And he stood in the doorway, exclaiming, "Oliver,
I'm done with it!"

Oliver stared at him. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean," cried his brother, "that I've had all I can stand of
'Society!' And I'm going to quit. You can go on--but I don't intend
to take another step with you! I've had enough--and I think Alice
has had enough, also. We'll take ourselves off your hands--we'll
get out!"

"What are you going to do?" gasped Oliver.

"I'm going to give up these expensive apartments--give them up
to-morrow, when our week is up. And I'm going to stop squandering
money for things I don't want. I'm going to stop accepting
invitations, and meeting people I don't like and don't want to know.
I've tried your game--I've tried it hard, and I don't like it; and
I'm going to get out before it's too late. I'm going to find some
decent and simple place to live in; and I'm going down town to find
out if there isn't some way in New York for a man to earn an honest
living!"

THE END