There had been a wild season, according to her own admissions or boastings—he could never quite tell which—extending over six or seven months, during which time Idelle had pretended to her mother, so she said, to prefer to live with her girl friend rather than return home. She had had, according to her, her machine, her servants, clothes without end, and what-not—a dream-world of luxury and freedom which he had provided and from which she never expected to wake, and her mother totally ignorant of it all the while! There had been everything she wished at her finger tips—hectic afternoons, evenings and midnights; affairs at country clubs or hotel grills, where the young bloods of the city and their girls congregated; wild rides in automobiles; visits to the nearest smartest watering-places, and the like. Or was she lying? He could scarcely think so, judging by her career with him and others since. * * * * * _Ah, what a comfort to fix oneself this way and rest, looking at the shadowy moonlit landscape passing by!_ * * * * * Idelle had often admitted or boasted that she had been wildly happy—that was the worst of it—that she had not quite realized what she was doing, but that she had no remorse either, even now—that she had lived! (And why should she have, perhaps? Weren’t all people really selfish at bottom—or were they?) Only, owing to her almost insatiable pagan nature, there were other complications right then and there—think of that!—an older rival millionaire, if you please, richer by far than Coulstone, and more influential locally ... and younger ones, too, who sought her but really did not win her, she having no time or plan for them. As it happened, the older one, having been worsted in the contest but being partially tolerated by her, had become frantically jealous and envious, although “he had no right,” as she said, and had finally set about making trouble for the real possessor, and succeeded to the extent of exposing him and eventually driving him out of the great concern with which he was connected and out of Pittsburgh, too, if you please, on moral grounds (?), although he himself was trying to follow in Coulstone’s footsteps! And all for the love or possession of a nineteen-year-old girl, a petticoat, a female ne’er-do-well! How little the world in general knew of such things—and it was a blessed thing, too, by George! Where would things be if everybody went on like that? * * * * * _The rhythmic clack of these wheels and trucks over these sleeper joints—a poetic beat, of sorts!_ * * * * *