“I thought, John, that you had no convictions!” exclaimed Richard pointedly. “You are mistaken, boy,” returned Fenton, with a touch of his old cynicism. “Every man has a large supply of them--to offer to his friends. Good-night.” CHAPTER XIX. “You are very thoughtful, Mr. Stoughton,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett gently, as she wheeled around on the piano-stool and looked Richard squarely in the face. “I was weighing a sentence just uttered by John Fenton--one of those haunting phrases of his that will not take a back seat when they have once entered the mind.” “He must be a man of peculiar power, this John Fenton,” commented Mrs. Percy-Bartlett musingly. “I have heard him quoted a good deal of late.” “By Gertrude Van Vleck?” asked Richard, with an impulsive exhibition of bad taste. Mrs. Percy-Bartlett frowned. “I am astonished, Mr. Stoughton! Your question is simply shocking. But tell me,” she continued, leaning forward, and looking at him inquisitively, “do you really think that Mr. Fenton is interested in Gertrude?” “I am astonished!” cried Richard. “Your question is simply shocking, Mrs. Percy-Bartlett.” Their eyes met, and they laughed merrily. They were both very happy for the moment. The love-affairs of other people may form at times a very effective counter-irritant and delay a crisis that Platonic friendship is apt to carry with it when a young married woman and an ardent youth use it as a cloak to conceal their feelings. “In some respects,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett musingly, “it would be an ideal union.” “If there are such,” put in Richard reflectively. “That sounds like the cynicism of your friend Mr. Fenton. I hope, Mr. Stoughton, that you are not losing your ideals.” “On the contrary,” said Richard earnestly, “I am finding new ones.” “May I ask where?” she murmured, a wistful look in her brown eyes. “I have found the highest of them all in this little music-room,” he said with more earnestness in his tone than it had held before. “What ideal is so beautiful as that which forms the basis of our friendship? Is it not true that the altar on which we make the hardest sacrifice is that which becomes the most sacred in our sight? I might live a thousand years, but when memory grew weary of its heavy task, it would still turn fondly to the scene before me now, and I would see myself in fancy a youth with an ideal--an ideal that sealed his lips--and broke his heart.” He had turned very pale, and his words seemed to him to have been forced from him by a mysterious and irresistible influence that he could neither recognize nor control. The woman’s eyes were heavy with unshed tears. As he had gone on speaking in a low, vibrant tone, she had felt the blood rush to her face, and then recede, leaving her cheeks white and drawn. Her hands trembled as she turned and struck a few wavering, melancholy chords on the piano.