“Oh, I forgot,” he went on. “You’ve a daughter almost grown. I suppose you want her looked after. All right. I’ll attend to it for you. Your wife won’t mind my wife’s calling? I’d have sent her long ago--in fact, I apologize for not having done it. But I hate the fashionable crowd. They bore me. However, your wife may like them. Women usually do.” It was at my lips to thank him and decline his offer. Then it flashed into my mind that perhaps my one hope of getting back my wife and daughter, of restoring them to sanity, lay in letting them have what they wanted. Another sort of man might have deluded himself with the notion that he could set his foot down, stamp out revolt, compel his family to do as he willed. But I happen not to be of that instinctively tyrannical and therefore inherently stupid temperament. Armitage ate in silence for a few moments, then said: “I’ll have you elected to the Federal Club.” “This club is all I need,” said I. He smiled sardonically. I didn’t understand that smile then, because I didn’t know anything about caste in New York. “You let me look after you,” said he. “You’re a child in the social game.” “I’ve no objection to remaining so,” said I. “Quite right. There’s nothing in it,” said he. “But you must remember you’re living in a world of rather cheap fools, and they are impressed by that nothing. On the other side of the Atlantic the social prizes have a large substantial value. Over here the value’s small. Still it’s something. You wouldn’t refuse even a trading stamp, would you?” I laughed. “I refuse nothing,” said I. “I take whatever’s offered me. If I find I don’t want it, why, what’s easier than to throw it away?” “Then I’ll put you in the Federal Club. You could have made me do it, if you had happened to want it. So, why shouldn’t I do it anyhow, in appreciation of your forbearance? You don’t realize, but I’m doing for you what about two thirds of the members of this club would lick my boots to get me to do for them.” “I had no idea the taste for shoe polish was so general here,” said I. “It’s a human taste, my dear Loring,” replied he. “It’s as common as the taste for bread. All the men have it. As for the women they like nothing so well. Having one’s boots licked is the highest human joy. Next comes licking boots.” “You don’t believe that?” said I, for his tone was almost too bitter for jest. “You aren’t acquainted with your kind, old man,” retorted he. “I don’t know the kind you know,” said I. And then I remembered my wife and my daughter. There must be truth in what Armitage had said; for, my beautiful wife and my sweet daughter, both looking so proud--surely they could not be rare exceptions in their insensibility to what seemed to me elemental self-respect.