“Yes, yes, I know! Very commendable. I wish Gordon had some interest in life—some——” “I’ll even go further, Mr. Ruggles. I’ll say that all the vulgarity and insult which I’ve suffered consistently from your son will not handicap him if he turns over a new leaf and shows he’s really made of stuff worth while. In fact, I’d be inclined to count it in his favor, strange as it may sound. For it will be a criterion of what he has overcome.” “Thank you,” said Amos. “Thank you very much!” IV All the week that call of Gordon’s father perturbed Madelaine. Or rather, it accentuated emotions which the nature of her activities and the demands upon her time were forcibly keeping latent. She had reached twenty-four and was still heart-free. Yet there were times when she distrusted herself. She wanted to shed tears without exactly knowing why. She felt herself groping out for a Something she could not give a name? Was it love? It troubled her. She had met men, all types and varieties and temperaments. She had golfed with them, danced with them, ridden with them, crossed social swords with them at house parties and on yacht cruises. She had looked at them frankly and fearlessly; assayed them; asked herself with a cold brain if she could think of herself as wife to any of them,—with all which wifehood, to a girl like herself, implied. The answer had always been negative, from repulsion or indifference. She mothered them, she sistered them, she heard their troubles, she even allowed a few of the elect to flirt with her,—in a harmless, blue-blooded way. But as for meeting a man in whose personality she could abandon herself, whom she could tolerate beside her always, in every situation that life might hold, most of all in its great privacies, there had never been such a man. She wondered at times if there would be. The young architect had gone to the Argentine. For a time he had corresponded with her. She felt a queer little pang and breathed a sigh when news came back one autumn of his marriage to the daughter of an American consul. There had been a young artist whom she had met in Paris. He had grasped her roughly in his arms one night and covered her face and throat with kisses. Strange to relate, she had felt neither insult nor repulsion. But she had discovered him a week later doing the same with another woman. She had laughed a queer little laugh and considered herself the butt of a rather good jest.