regretted having given Katharine but that one word in answer to her appeal--for he did not wish to seem even more unforgiving than he felt. “I’ll come as soon as possible,” he said, turning to her. “I’ll come now, if you like.” It would have been a satisfaction to have it over at once. But Katharine shook her head. “You must stay with the men--but--thank you, Jack.” Her voice was very sweet and low. At that moment Ruth Van De Water nodded to her brother, and in an instant all the sixteen chairs were pushed back simultaneously, and the laughter died away in the rustle of soft skirts and the moving of two and thirty slippered feet on the thick carpet. “No!” cried Miss Van De Water, looking over her shoulder with a little laugh at the man next to her, who offered his arm in the European fashion. “We don’t want you--we’re not in Washington--we’re going to talk about you, and we want to be by ourselves. Stay and smoke your cigars--but not forever, you know,” she added, and laughed again, a silvery, girlish laugh. Ralston stood back and watched the fair young girls and women as they filed out. After all, there was not one that could compare with Katharine--whether he loved her, or not, he added mentally. When the men were alone, they gathered round him under a great cloud of smoke over their little cups of coffee and their tiny liqueur glasses of many colours. He had always been more popular than he had been willing to think, which was the reason why so much had been forgiven him. He had assuredly done nothing heroic on the present occasion, unless his manly effort to fight against his taste for drinking was heroic. If it was, the majority of the seven other men did not think of it nor care. But he did not deserve such very great credit even for that, perhaps, for there was that strain of asceticism in him which makes such things easier for some people than for others. Most of them, being young, envied and admired him for having stood up to a champion prize-fighter in fair combat, heavily handicapped as he had been, and for having reached his antagonist once, at least, before he went down. A good deal of the enthusiasm young men occasionally express for one of themselves rests on a similar basis, and yet is not to be altogether despised on that account.