self-consciousness that generally goes with the pulling down of the fourth wall, "I don't mind telling you, Pel, old man, but I'd give ten years of my life to marry Beatrix Vanderdyke."

"An expensive hobby," said Franklin.

"Yes, quite. But I knew her when she was a little bit of a slip of a thing, before she realized what it meant to bear that dollar-weighted name. She was the sweetest kid I ever saw. She might have been left behind by the fairies. I watched the gradual change take place in her and the disastrous effect of governesses who licked the blacking off her boots and the army of servants who treated her as though she were the First National Bank come to life. I was one of the people, almost unnoticed, who stood on the pier and watched her sail for England with her mother and father and their retinue. Since her return and during the time that she was a débutante and every newspaper in the country knelt at her feet I have met her perhaps a dozen times—the opera, the horse show, the races, and so on. She has given me two fingers and half a smile. She has been utterly and absolutely spoiled. She doesn't seem to be even distantly related to the little girl with the fairy face with whom I used to play in the country. And that's why I should like to marry her, and would make a huge sacrifice to do it. You may laugh and call me all sorts of a fool, but I should like to make it my business to chip off the outer layer of artificiality and affectation which has been plastered all over by her training and atmosphere. I would willingly die in hefty middle-age in order to bring back into that girl's eyes once more the look that she used to have as a child, so help me God!"

With extreme surprise Franklin watched his usually unemotional friend get up and walk over to the window. His voice had shaken with deep feeling and there was a sincerity so profound in the sudden disclosure of his soul that it put him outside the region of chaff. And so Franklin left him alone and swallowed the badinage which he had intended to throw at him. "Ye gods!" he thought. "I wonder if I shall ever meet a woman who will make me think such things as that, or go the eighth of an inch out of my way. I rather wish I could." He possessed enough humor and imagination to know that he was not unlike the girl under discussion; that he, like her, had been born in surroundings that were peculiarly artificial and altogether unlike those of the average man; that the enormous wealth to which he had succeeded made any sort of effort unnecessary, and left him without the urgent incentive for the good and glorious grapple for a place in the sun, which made most of his countrymen prove themselves and their worth.

He led the way into the studio where all that his life could show hung on the walls. Each head and each stuffed fish and every one of the skins had its interest, but as he looked round the huge room he told himself that they all came to very little and proved that he was a fine example of a man who had done nothing but play games. His toys were very empty and meaningless. A new and curious impatience with himself came over him. He was rather annoyed with Fraser for having shown him the quivering nerve of his hitherto hidden sincerity. "My God!" he thought. "I wonder when I shall begin to live!"