Sinking upon the seat she proceeded to uncoil her heavy hair, braiding it deftly over her shoulder. Gathering up her combs from the cushion, she went into the hallway and pressed the button regulating the lights. In the white glow she regarded her face in the mirror over the fireplace shelf and smiled back faintly at the reflection. As she turned to the stairway she perceived a white card lying on the floor. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. It was a little photograph of a young, sweet-faced girl and written across the margin at the bottom she read--the writing ordinary--"To Jack, from Susie." She turned and stared an instant at the vestibule door. Then she mounted the stairs, slowly. Her mother's voice from the hallway below awakened her. "I'm here, dear," she called back. "I went to bed--I was so tired." III There is this to be said of Jack Houston: whenever he took liquor--which was often--he took it like a man. None of the alley-door for him; through the front door, as sturdy and frank as a Crusader or not at all--that was his way. Let a faculty man be coming toward him half a block distant, there was no hesitation; not a waver. He--if such were the circumstance--would nod and pass directly beyond the double swinging screens, and not give the incident another thought. Nor were bottles ever delivered to his room in boxes marked "Candles." Indeed the outward signs were that he took pride in the bravado with which he carried on the business; for there on the boxes were the stenciled labels--plain enough to be read distinctly across the street--"Perth Whiskey." But it was not that he had a pride in what certain of his fellows were wont to call his "independence." It was simply that he drank--drank when he chose; paid for what he drank; and drank it like a man--a Southern man, honorably. The real trouble was not that he saw fit and cared to drink, or what he drank; but that he drank so much. And he was in love now; reveling in a multitude of agreeable sensations, which, perhaps, he had not even dreamed himself destined ever to experience in such fulness. Analyzing his emotions he marveled at the condition he discovered. He set himself apart and regarded the other Jack Houston critically. He denied his heart's impeachment; the other Jack sneered and called him a fool. He laughed; the other Jack said,--or seemed to say: "Laugh away; but it's a serious business all the same." He flaunted; the other adhered to the original charge. In the end he stood before that other Jack and held out his hand, as it were, and--like a man--confessed. And it devolved upon him forthwith to celebrate the discovery of a cardiac ailment he had not experienced before as he was experiencing it now. So, with barbaric, almost beautiful, recklessness, he got drunk; thoroughly, creditably drunk.