Aynesworth leaned back in his chair, and contemplated his companion for the next few moments in thoughtful silence. It was hard, he felt, to take a man who talked like this seriously. His manner was convincing, his speech deliberate and assured. There was not the slightest doubt but that he meant what he said, yet it seemed to Aynesworth equally certain that the time would come, and come quickly, when the unnatural hardness of the man would yield to the genial influence of friendship, of pleasure, of the subtle joys of freedom. Those past days of hideous monotony, of profitless, debasing toil, the long, sleepless nights, the very nightmare of life to a man of Wingrave’s culture and habits, might well have poisoned his soul, have filled him with ideas such as these. But everything was different now! The history of the world could show no epoch when pleasures so many and various were there for the man who carries the golden key. Today he was a looker-on, and the ice of his years of bitterness had not melted. Tomorrow, at any moment, he might catch a whiff of the fragrance of life, and the blood in his veins would move to a different tune. This was how it seemed to Aynesworth, as he studied his companion through the faint blue mist of tobacco smoke. “This expression of your sentiments,” he remarked at last, “is interesting so far as it goes. I am, however, a practical person, and my connection with you is of a practical order. You don’t propose, I presume, to promenade the streets with a cat-o-nine-tails?” “Your curiosity,” Wingrave remarked, “is reasonable. Tomorrow I may gratify some portion of it after my interview with Lady Ruth. In the meantime, I might remark that to the observant person who has wits and money, the opportunities for doing evil present themselves, I think, with reasonable frequency. I do not propose, however, to leave things altogether to chance.” “A definite scheme of ill-doing,” Aynesworth ventured to suggest, “would be more satisfactory?” “Exactly,” he admitted. He called for the bill, and his eyes wandered once more around the room as the waiter counted out the change. The band were playing the “Valse Amoureuse”; the air was grown heavy with the odor of tobacco and the mingled perfumes of flowers and scents. A refrain of soft laughter followed the music. An after-dinner air pervaded the place. Wingrave’s lip curled. “My lack of kinship with my fellows,” he remarked, “is exceedingly well defined just now. I agree with the one philosopher who declared that ‘eating and drinking are functions which are better performed in private.’” The two men went on to a theater. The play was a society trifle--a thing of the moment. Wingrave listened gravely, without a smile or any particular sign of interest. At the end of the second act, he turned towards his companion. “The lady in the box opposite,” he remarked, “desires to attract your attention.”