To begin with, thirty minutes were to be devoted to a bath and dressing in his rooms. This was something not so unpleasant to contemplate. It was the afterwards that repelled him: the dinner at Sherry's, the subsequent tour of roof gardens, the late supper at a club, and then, prolonged far into the small hours, the session around some green-covered table in a close room reeking with the fumes of good tobacco and hot with the fever of gambling.... Abstractedly Maitland frowned, tersely summing up: "Beastly!"--in an undertone. At this the green car wheeled abruptly round a corner below Thirty-fourth Street, slid half a block or more east, and came to a palpitating halt. Maitland, looking up, recognized the entrance to his apartments, and sighed with relief for the brief respite from boredom that was to be his. He rose, negligently shaking off his duster, and stepped down to the sidewalk. Somebody in the car called a warning after him, and turning for a moment he stood at attention, an eyebrow raised quizzically, cigarette drooping from a corner of his mouth, hat pushed back from his forehead, hands in coat pockets: a tall, slender, sparely-built figure of a man, clothed immaculately in flannels. When at length he was able to make himself heard, "Good enough," he said clearly, though without raising his voice. "Sherry's in an hour. Right. Now, behave yourselves." "Mind you show up on time!" "Never fear," returned Maitland over his shoulder. A witticism was flung back at him from the retreating car, but spent itself unregarded. Maitland's attention was temporarily distracted by the unusual--to say the least--sight of a young and attractive woman coming out of a home for confirmed bachelors. The apartment house happened to be his own property. A substantial and old-fashioned edifice, situated in the middle of a quiet block, it contained but five roomy and comfortable suites,--in other words, one to a floor; and these were without exception tenanted by unmarried men of Maitland's own circle and acquaintance. The janitor, himself a widower and a convinced misogynist, lived alone in the basement. Barring very special and exceptional occasions (as when one of the bachelors felt called upon to give a tea in partial recognition of social obligations), the foot of woman never crossed its threshold.