Beauty, beauty, beauty! How could one gainsay the charm or avoid the lure of it? Not he, for one. Trig, beautiful women, who carried themselves with an air and swing and suggested by their every movement passion, alertness, gayety of mind! The church bells might ring and millions of religionists preach of a life hereafter with a fixed table of rewards and punishments, but what did any one know of the future, anyhow? Nothing! Exactly nothing, in spite of all the churches. Life appeared and disappeared again; a green door opened and out you went, via a train wreck, for instance, on a night like this. All these farmers here tilling their fields and making their little homes and towns—where would they be in forty or fifty years, with all their moralities? No, here and now was life, here and now beauty—here and now Idelle, or creatures like her and Jessica. * * * * * _He would pay his bill and go into the smoker for a change. It would be pleasant to sit there until his berth was made up._ * * * * * Then, take that affair of the banker’s son, young Gratiot it was, whom he knew well even now here in G——, only Gratiot did not know that he knew—or did he? Perhaps he was still friendly with Idelle, although she denied it. You could never really believe her. He it was, according to her, who had captured her fancy with his fine airs and money and car when she was only seventeen, and then robbed her (or could you call it robbery in Idelle’s case, seeking, restless creature that she was?) of her indifferent innocence. No robbery there, surely, whatever she might say. * * * * * _Those fascinating coke ovens blazing in the dark beside the track, mile after mile!_ * * * * * Somehow her telling him these things at first, or rather shortly after they were married and when she was going to make a clean breast of everything and lead a better life, had thrown a wonderful glamour over her past. * * * * * _“Gay Stories”! What a name for a magazine! And that stout old traveling man reading it!_ * * * * *