"Well! Has Vesuvius subsided?" Saxton sat up in his chair and watched Raridan breaking matches wastefully in a nervous effort to strike a light. "John Saxton, what a beastly ass I am! What a merry-go-round of a fool I make of myself!" Warry blew a cloud of smoke into the air. "Yes," said John, pulling away at his pipe. "As I'm a living man, I had no more intention of driving with that girl than I had of going up in a balloon and walking back. You know I never knew her well; I don't want to know her, for that matter; not on your life!" "Is this a guessing contest? I suppose I'm the goat. Well, you didn't care for Miss Margrave's society; is that what you're driving at? She shan't hear this from me; I'm as safe as a tomb. Moreover, I don't enjoy her acquaintance. Go ahead now, full speed." "And it was just my infernal hard luck that I got caught this afternoon," continued Warry, ignoring him. "Sometimes it seems to me that I'm predestined and foreordained to do fool things. I've been working like blue blazes on that washerwoman's suit against the Transcontinental,--running their switch through her back yard,--and I had put away all kinds of temptation and was feeling particularly virtuous; but here came the Margrave nigger with that girl's note, and I went up the street in long jumps to meet her, and let her drive me all over town and all over the country, and order me a highball on the Country Club porch, and generally make an ass of me. I wish you'd do something to me; hit me with a club, or throw me down the elevator, or do something equally brutal and coarse that would jar a little of the folly out of me. Why," he continued, with utter self-contempt, through which his humor glimmered, "I ought to have turned down Mabel's invitation as soon as I saw the monogram on her note paper. Three colors, and letters as big as your hand! My instinctive good taste falters, old man; it needs restoring and chastening." "I quite agree with you, sir. But it's more gallant to abuse yourself than Miss Margrave's stationery--that is, if I am correctly gathering up the crumbs of your thought. I believe you had reached the highball incident in your recital. Was it rye or Scotch? This is the day of realism, and if I'm to give you counsel, or sympathy, or whatever it is you want, I must know all the petty details." "Don't be foolish," said Raridan, staring abstractedly; then he bent his eyes sharply on Saxton. "See here, John," he said quietly, folding his arms. He had never before called Saxton by his first name; and the change marked a further advance of intimacy. "Yes." "You know I'm a good deal of a fool and all that sort of thing--" "Chuck that and go ahead." "But she means a whole lot to me. You know whom I mean." Saxton knew he did not mean Mabel Margrave. "You know," Raridan went on, "we were kids together up there on those hills. We both had our dancing lessons at her house, and did such stunts as that together." "Yes," said Saxton.