"I'm afraid you've given me a taste for luxury and amusement. You _have_ spoiled me I fear. I am certainly an ungrateful little beast, am I not, to lay the blame on you! But it is dull, Clive, after working all day to sit every evening reading alone, or lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the others to come home. "If it were not for that darling cat you gave me I'd perish of sheer solitude. But he is such a comfort, Hafiz; and his eyes are the bluest blue and his long, winter fur the snowiest white, and his ruff is wonderful and his tail magnificent. Also he is _very_ affectionate to me. For which, with perfect reverence, I venture to thank God. "Good night, Clive. If you've struggled through this letter so far you won't mind reading that I am faithfully and always your friend, "ATHALIE GREENSLEEVE." Her letter thoroughly aroused Clive and he was all for going straight to her--only he couldn't go that evening because he dared not break a dinner engagement or fail to appear with his mother at the opera. In fact he was already involved in a mess of social obligations for two weeks ahead,--not an evening free--and Athalie worked during the day. It gave him an odd, restless sensation to hear of her going about with Francis Hargrave--dining alone with him. He felt almost hurt as though she had done him a personal injustice, yet he knew that it was absurd for him to resent anything of that sort. His monopoly of her happened to be one merely because she, at that time, knew no other man of his sort, and would not go out with any other kind of man. Why should he expect her to remain eternally isolated except when he chose to take her out? No young girl could endure that sort of thing too long. Certainly Athalie was inevitably destined to meet other men, be admired, admire in her turn, accept invitations. She was unusually beautiful,--a charming, intelligent, clean-cut, healthy young girl. She required companionship and amusement; she would be unhuman if she didn't. Only--men were men. And safe and sane friendships between men of his own caste, and girls like Athalie Greensleeve, were rare. Clive chafed and became restive and morose. In vain he repeated to himself that what Athalie was doing was perfectly natural. But it didn't make the idea of her going out with other men any more attractive to him. His clever mother, possibly aware of what ferment was working in her son, watched him out of the tail of her ornamental eyes, but wisely let him alone to fidget his own way out of it. She had heard that the Greensleeve girl was raising hob with Cecil Reeve and Francis Hargrave. They were other people's sons, however. And it might have worked itself out of Clive--this restless ferment which soured his mind and gave him an acid satisfaction in being anything but cordial in his own family circle.