It was the custom at Richard Pennington’s dinners for the men to follow the ladies at once to the library or drawing-room if they cared to, for Nellie Pennington liked smoking and made no bones about it. People who dined with her were expected to do exactly as they pleased, and this included the use of tobacco in all parts of the house. She was not running a kindergarten, she insisted, and the mothers of timorous buds were amply warned that they must look to the habits of their tender offspring. And so after the ices were served, when the women departed, some of their dinner partners followed them into the other rooms, finding more pleasure in the cigarette à deux than in the stable talk at the dismantled dining-table.

Phil Gallatin rose and followed the ladies to the door and then returned, sank into a vacant chair and began smoking, thinking deeply of the new difficulty into which Nina Jaffray had plunged him. A small group of men remained, Larry Kane, William Worthington, Ogden Spencer, and Egerton Savage, who gathered at the end of the table around their host.

“Selected your 1913 model yet, Bibby?” Pennington asked with a laugh. “What is she to be this time? Inside control, of course, maximum flexibility, minimum friction——”

“Oh, forget it, Dick,” said Worthington, sulkily.

[137]

“No offense, you know. Down on your luck? Cheer up, old chap, you’ll be in love again presently. There are as many good fish in the sea——”

“I’m not fishing,” put in Bibby with some dignity.

“By George!” whispered Larry Kane, in awed tones, “I believe he’s got it again. Oh, Bibby, when you marry, Venus will go into sackcloth and ashes!”

“So will Bibby,” said Spencer. “Marriage isn’t his line at all. You know better than that, don’t you, Bibby. No demnition bow-wows on your Venusberg—what? You’ve got the secret. Love often and you’ll love longer. Aren’t I right, Bibby?”

“Oh, let Bibby alone,” sighed Savage. “He’s got the secret. I take my hat off to him. Every year he bathes in the Fountain of Youth, and like the chap in the book—what’s his name?—gazes at his rejuvenated reflection in the limpid pool of virgin eyes. Look at him! Forty-five, if he’s a day, and looks like a stage juvenile.”

Gallatin listened to the chatter with dull ears, smiling perfunctorily, not because he enjoyed this particular kind of humor, but because he did not choose to let his silence become conspicuous. And when the sounds from a piano were heard and the men rose to join the ladies, he had made a resolve to see Jane Loring alone before the evening was gone.

In the drawing-room Betty Tremaine was playing airs from the latest Broadway musical success, which Dirwell De Lancey was singing with a throaty baritone. Jane Loring sat on a sofa next to her hostess, both of them laughing at young Perrine, who began showing the company a new version of the turkey-trot.

“Do a ‘Dance Apache,’ Freddy,” cried Nina Jaffray, springing to her feet. “You know,” and before he knew what she was about, he was seized by the arms, and while[138] Miss Tremaine caught the spirit of the thing in a gay cadence of the Boulevards, the two of them flew like mad things around the room, to the imminent hazard of furniture and its occupants. There was something barbaric in their wild rush as they whirled apart and came together again and the dance ended only when Freddy Perrine catapulted into a corner, breathless and exhausted. Miss Jaffray remained upright, her slender breast heaving, her eyes dark with excitement, glancing from one to another with the bold challenge of a Bacchante fresh from the groves of Naxos. There was uproarious applause and a demand for repetition, but as no one volunteered to take the place of the exhausted Perrine, the music ceased and Miss Jaffray, after rearranging her disordered hair, threw herself into a vacant chair.

“You’re wonderful, Nina!” said Nellie Pennington, languidly, “but how can you do it? It’s more like wrestling than dancing?”

“I like wrestling,” said Miss Jaffray, unperturbedly.

Auction tables were formed in the library and the company divided itself into parties of three or four, each with its own interests. Gallatin soon learned that it might prove difficult to carry his resolution into effect, for Miss Loring was the center of a group which seemed to defy disruption, and Coleman Van Duyn immediately pre-empted the nearest chair, from which nothing less than dynamite would have availed to dislodge him. Gallatin had heard that Van Duyn had been with the Lorings in Canada, and had wondered vaguely whether this fact could have anything to do with that gentleman’s sudden change of manner toward himself. The two men had gone to the same school, and the same university; and while they had never been by temper or inclination in the slightest degree suited to each other, circumstances threw[139] them often together and as fellow club-mates they had owed and paid each other a tolerable civility. But this winter Van Duyn’s nods had been stiff and his manner taciturn. Personally, Phil Gallatin did not care whether Coleman Van Duyn was civil or not, and only thought of the matter in its possible reference to Jane Loring. Gallatin leaned over the back of the sofa in conversation with Nellie Pennington, listening with one ear to Coley’s rather heavy attempts at amiability.

After a while his hostess moved to a couch in the corner and motioned for him to take the place beside her.

“You know, Phil,” she began, reproving him in her softest tones, “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Aren’t you flattered? You ought to be. I’ve made up my mind to speak to you with all the seriousness of my advanced years.”

“Yes, Mother, dear,” laughed Phil. “What is it now? Have I been breaking window-panes or pulling the cat’s tail?”

“Neither—and both,” she returned calmly. “But it’s your sins of omission that bother me most. You’re incorrigibly lazy!”

“Thanks,” he said, settling himself comfortably. “I know it.”

“And aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Awfully.”

“I’m told that you’re never in your office, that you’ve let your practice go to smash, that your partners are on the point of casting you into the outer darkness.”

“Oh, that’s true,” he said wearily. “I’ve practically withdrawn from the firm, Nellie. I didn’t bring any business in. It’s even possible that I kept some of it out. I’m a moral and physical incubus. In fact, John Kenyon has almost told me so.”

[140]

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do?
A Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and thou.

If you’ll come with me, Nellie.”

There was no response of humor in Nellie Pennington’s expression.

“No,” she said quietly. “Not I. I want you to be serious, Phil.” She paused a moment, looking down, and when her eyes sought his again he saw in them the spark of a very genuine interest. “I don’t know whether you know it or not, Phil, but I’m really very fond of you. And if I didn’t understand you as well as I do, of course, I wouldn’t dare to be so frank.”

Philip Gallatin inclined his head slightly.

“Go on, please,” he said.

She hesitated a moment and then clutched his arm with her strong fingers.

“I want you to wake up, Phil,” she said with sudden insistence. “I want you to wake up, to open your eyes wide—wide, do you hear, to stretch your intellectual fibers and learn something of your own strength. You’re asleep, Boy! You’ve been asleep for years! I want you to wake up—and prove the stuff that’s in you. You’re the last of your line, Phil, the very last; but whatever the faults your fathers left you, you’ve got their genius, too.”

Gallatin was slowly shaking his head.

“Not that—only——”

“I know it,” she said proudly. “You can’t hide from everybody, Phil. I still remember those cases you won when you were just out of law-school—that political one[141] and the other of the drunkard indicted on circumstantial evidence——”

“I was interested in that,” he muttered.

“You’ll be interested again. You must be. Do you hear? You’ve come to the parting of the ways, Phil, and you’ve got to make a choice. You’re drifting with the tide, and I don’t like it, waiting for Time to provide your Destiny when you’ve got the making of it in your own hands. You’ve got to put to sea, hoist what sail you’ve got and brave the elements.”

“I’m a derelict, Nellie,” he said painfully.

“Shame! Phil,” she whispered. “A derelict is a ship without a soul. You a derelict! Then society is made up of derelicts, discards from the game of opportunity. Some of us are rich. We think we can afford to be idle. Ambition doesn’t matter to such men as Dick, or Larry Kane, or Egerton Savage. Their lines were drawn in easy places, their lives were ready-made from the hour that they were born. But you! There’s no excuse for you. You are not rich. As the world considers such things, you’re poor and so you’re born for better things! You’ve got the Gallatin intellect, the Gallatin solidity, the Gallatin cleverness——”

“And the Gallatin insufficiency,” he finished for her.

“A fig for your vices,” she said contemptuously. “It’s the little men of this world that never have any vices. No big man ever was without them. Whatever dims the luster of the spirit, the white fire of intellect burns steadily on, unless—” she paused and glanced at him, quickly, lowering her voice—“unless the luster of the spirit is dimmed too long, Phil.”

He clasped his long fingers around one of his knees and looked thoughtfully at the rug.

“I understand,” he said quietly.

[142]

“You don’t mind my speaking to you so, do you, Phil, dear?”

He closed his eyes, and then opening them as though with an effort, looked at her squarely.

“No, Nellie.”

Her firm hand pressed his strongly. “Let me help you, Phil. There are not many fellows I’d go out of my way for, not many of them are worth it. Phil, you’ve got to take hold at once—right away. Make a fresh start.”

“I did take hold for—for a good while and then—and then I slipped a cog——”

“Why? You mean it was too hard for you?”

“No, not at all. It had got so that I wasn’t bothered—not much—that is—I let go purposely.” He stopped suddenly. “I can’t tell you why. I guess I’m a fool—that’s all.”

She examined his face with a new interest. There was something here she could not understand. She had known Phil Gallatin since his boyhood and had always believed in him. She had watched his development with the eyes of an elder sister, and had never given up the hope that he might carry on the traditions of his blood in all things save the one to be dreaded. She had never talked with him before. Indeed, she would not have done so to-night had it not been that a strong friendly impulse had urged her. She made it a practice never to interfere in the lives of others, if interference meant the cost of needless pain; but as she had said to him, Phil Gallatin was worth helping. She was thankful, too, that he had taken her advice kindly.

What was this he was saying about letting go purposely. What—but she had reached the ends of friendliness and the beginnings of curiosity.

[143]

“No, you’re not a fool, Phil. You sha’n’t call yourself names.” And then, “You say you weren’t bothered—much?”

“No. Things had got a good deal easier for me. I was beginning to feel hopeful for the future. It had cost me something, but I had got my grip. I had started in at the office again, and Kenyon had given me some important work to do. Good old Uncle John! He seemed to know that I was trying.”

He stopped a moment and then went on rapidly. “He turned me loose on a big corporation case the f............