All this they will tell you, the garrulous and bitter old men, and while they inveigh against Kerrigan, you see somewhere in their eyes a glint of admiration and of envy. The arena of Wall Street differs little from the arena of Neronic Rome; _væ victis_ is the motto and the rule of the game. And before you can leave them in contemptuous horror they will tap you on the knee, gloatingly dramatic. "And now Kerrigan is going to marry Holt's daughter! Can you beat it? Can you beat that?" He had gone--perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of the depths of sentimentality that men of his type have somewhere in the bottom of their hearts--with his cousin, the chubby little minister of religion, to the prize-giving at the convent in Newark. The bishop was there, and a play of Dunsany's was given; a few poems recited, and a song or two sung. His eye had been attracted all through the exercises by a tall girl in a white dress with a blue sash--a slim girl with hazel eyes and light-brown hair who in the distance had the profile of a Saint Cecilia--a Saint Cecilia with a somewhat broad, honest mouth and good firm teeth. "That's an attractive girl," he told his cousin. The little cherubic minister, who worried in secret about his cousin's soul, was delighted. He dreamed often of having his cousin Matthew reformed by the influence of some sweet woman. A Dominican religious brought her forward. "Miss Holt, Miss Agnes Holt." Kerrigan was introduced to her. He talked banalities to her for a half-hour, when she shyly took her leave of him, blushing furiously under the glances of her schoolmates. When he was alone Kerrigan smiled queerly, with a distant look in his eyes. At forty-five there comes always to a man of Kerrigan's type, with the first gray hairs, the fear of age. There will be an inevitable day when he will no longer attract women, and when, in the bars and about the clubs, he will be referred to as an old man of another generation, and there arises in his mind the fear of loneliness in the fifties and the sixties, with Death hurrying breathlessly toward him day by day. The only thing to do then is to begin anew with a young wife, far away from the swirl of the city. "It's the only life," they say pathetically; "a wife and kiddies, a little bit of land somewhere, away from all this stuff." And they wave their hands at the gleaming glasses and the pictures on the bar-room walls. "There's nothing to it," they aver; and they drink up and have another one. He met the religious as he was going away. "That Miss Holt," he said, "is a very attractive girl." It was the only adjective he knew to fit her. "Yes," the nun agreed. "We all like her. She 's been with us nearly all her life. Her father died when she was young. He was an inventor; Leonard Holt was his name." "The name is familiar." Kerrigan was shocked, but his self-restraint was superb. "Died after some business depression, if I remember aright?"