Reynolds had been silent for some time. As I looked at him now I could see that he was a good deal impressed by Orrington’s narrative. I wasn’t surprised, for I knew him to be a generous fellow in spite of his foibles. “Yes, how about it, Reynolds?” I said. “It is a very affecting story,” he answered. “You acted most generously, Orrington, though you make light of it. I can’t believe that the young man realized the sacrifice you made for him; otherwise his failure to thank you, bad enough in any case, would be unspeakable. He can’t have known.” “But you insist that I’d better have let him alone,” persisted Orrington, clearly with the intention of teasing our magnificent acquaintance. “That depends altogether on how it turned out, doesn’t it? You can’t tell us whether the young man was worth saving or not.” Orrington laughed contentedly. “No. That’s the missing conclusion, but I’m not sorry to have given him a show. Besides, what I did wasn’t such a noble sacrifice, after all. Having basked in your admiration for a moment, I can afford to tell you. I’m not an accomplished hypocrite, and I’d hate to begin at my age. Let me tell you what happened.” I felt aggrieved. Had Orrington been working on our feelings for his private amusement merely? “You said there wasn’t any conclusion,” I growled. “Don’t get huffy,” Orrington returned imperturbably. “The story hasn’t any ending, as I warned you. Only my part in it turned out rather amusingly. I hope I shouldn’t be fatuous ass enough to brag about the incident if there were anything in it that demanded bouquets. I suspect the bubble of noble actions often bursts just as mine did.” “What do you mean?” asked Reynolds—reasonably enough, I thought. “Only this,” Orrington went on. “It turned out that the people who had offered to let me do the articles were tremendously impressed by my turning them down. The letter I wrote them must have been a corker. Somehow or other they got the notion that I was a very busy man and a person of importance. They ought to have known better, of course, but they evidently adopted that silly idea. They talked about me to their friends and cracked me up as a coming man. The upshot of it was that I began to be tempted with most flattering offers of one sort and another—before long I had my choice of several things. My self-constituted backers were rather powerful in those days, so it was useful to be in their good books. I left my moribund magazine and got so prosperous that I began to grow fat at once. Serene obscurity has been my lot ever since; and I’ve never got rid of the fat.” “That’s a happy ending,” I remarked lazily. “It’s very like a real conclusion. What more do you want?” “Oh, for the sake of argument, I’d like to prove that I was right and that Reynolds’s theory is all wrong.”