Teddy wondered what had happened to the world that all its women had become Vestal Virgins and all its men unassailable St. Anthonies. He watched Mr. Dak for any sign that he remembered the days of his flesh. The little man was as perfunctory over his duties as a well-trained lackey. Vashti’s bearing towards himself during their brief meetings was affectionately sentimental. There was a hint of the proprietary in the way she touched him, as though she regarded him already as her son. Her eyes would rest on him with veiled inquiry; she never put her question into words. She was giving him his chance, and he felt infinitely grateful to her--so grateful that he was blind to the unexplained situations which surrounded her. That she should allow his unchaperoned relations with Desire endowed her with broadmindedness. “Unto the pure all things are pure,” seemed the maxim on which she acted. In accepting that ruling for his own conduct, he had to extend the same leniency to Mr. Dak’s. Desire stretched it a point further and made it apply to herself. He found that frequently after he had said “Good-by” to her at close on midnight, Fluffy would call with a car and carry her off to make a party of three at supper, or sometimes to join a larger party--mostly of men--in her apartment. He remonstrated with her: “It’s all very well for an actress; but I hate to think of you mixing with all kinds of people whose standards are just anyhow, and playing ’gooseberry’ for two people older than yourself.” “I don’t see that you can complain,” she laughed. “If my standards weren’t theatrical and if I were the kind of girl who sees evil in everything, you wouldn’t be allowed to go about with me so much.” There was his dilemma in a nut-shell. In joining the ranks of the superiorly pure, he was pledged to see purity everywhere. Divorces were pure. Nobody was to blame for anything. People ought to be sympathized with, not punished, when they got into trouble. He seemed to have made lax conventions his own by taking advantage of them for facilitating his courtship. It would look like hypocrisy to disapprove of them after marriage. It was very jolly, for instance, to hear her whisper in the jingling secrecy of a hansom, “Meester Deek, please light me a cigarette.” Very jolly to convey it from his lips to hers, and to watch the red glow of each puff make a cameo of her face against the blackness. But---- And that _but_ was perpetually walking round new corners to confront him--if she were his wife, would the sight of her smoking afford him such abiding happiness? She had taunted him with being a King Arthur. In the presence of her emotional tolerance, which found excuses for everything and ostracized nobody, his sense of propriety seemed a lack of social charity. He guessed the reason for her continual plea that people should be forgiving--her mother. The knowledge silenced his criticisms and roused his compassion.