"Why not?" he demanded. "Agnes, it seems quite impossible for you to divorce business and social affairs. I tell you they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The opportunity Sharpe offered me is a splendid one. Chalmers and Johnson investigated it thoroughly, and both advise me that it is quite an unusually good chance." "You didn't seem to be able to divorce business and social affairs last night," she reminded him rather sharply, returning to the main point at issue and ignoring all else. There was the rub. She could not get out of her mind the picture of Mrs. Sharpe chatting gaily with him, smiling up at him and all but fawning upon him, in full view of any number of people who knew both Agnes and Bobby. "You have made a deliberate choice of your companions, Mr. Burnit, after being warned against them from more than one source," she told him, aflame with indignant jealousy, but speaking with the rigidity common in such quarrels, "and you may abide by your choice." "Agnes!" he protested. "You don't mean--" "I mean just this," she interrupted him coldly, "that I certainly can not afford to be seen in public, and don't particularly care to entertain in private, any one who permits himself to be seen in public with, or entertained in private by, the notorious Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe." They were both of them pale, both trembling, both stiffened by hurt and rebellious pride. Bobby gazed at her a moment in a panic, and saw no relenting in her eyes, in her pose, in her compressed lips. She was still thinking of the way Mrs. Sharpe had looked at him. "Very well," said he, quite calmly; "since our arrangements for this evening are off, I presume I may as well accept that invitation to dine at Sharpe's," and with this petty threat he left the house. At the Idlers' he was met by a succession of grins that were more aggravating because for the most part they were but scantily explained. Nick Allstyne, indeed, did take him into a corner, with a vast show of secrecy, requested him to have an ordinance passed, through his new and influential friends, turning Bedlow Park into a polo ground; while Payne Winthrop added insult to injury by shaking hands with him and most gravely congratulating him--but upon what he would not say. Bobby was half grinning and yet half angry when he left the club and went over for his usual half hour at the gymnasium. Professor Henry H. Bates was also grinning.