"Why don't they then?--instead of dragging you about at their heels from house to house, from card-room to ball-room, from café to opera, from one week-end to the next!--robbing you of time, of leisure, of opportunity, of ambition--spoiling you--making a bally monkey of you! You're always in some fat woman's opera box or on some fat man's yacht or coach, or doing some damn thing--with your name figuring in everything from Newport to Hot Springs--and--and how can you ever turn into anything except a tame cat!" Quarren's face reddened slightly. "I'd be perfectly willing to sit in an office all day and all night if anybody would give me any business. But what's the use of chewing pencils and watching traffic on Forty-second Street?" "Then go into another business!" "I haven't any money." "I'll lend it to you!" "I can't risk _your_ money, Karl. I'm too uncertain of myself. If anybody else offered to stake me I'd try the gamble." ... He looked up at Westguard, ashamed, troubled, and showing it like a boy. "I'm afraid I don't amount to anything, Karl. I'm afraid I'm no good except in the kind of thing I seem to have a talent for." "Fetching and carrying for the fashionable and wealthy," sneered Westguard. Quarren's face flushed again: "I suppose that's it." Westguard glared at him: "I wish I could shake it out of you!" "I guess the poison's there," said Quarren in a low voice. "The worst of it is I like it--except when I understand your contempt." "You _like_ to fetch and carry and go about with your pocket full of boudoir keys!" "People give me as much as I give them." "They don't!" said the other angrily. "They've taken a decent fellow and put him in livery!" Quarren bit his lip as the blood leaped to his face. "Don't talk that way, Karl," he said quietly. "Even you have no business to take that tone with me." There was a silence. After a few moments Westguard came over and held out his hand. Quarren took it, looked at him. "I tell you," he said, "there's nothing to me. It's your kindness, Karl, that sees in me possibilities that never were." "They're there. I'll do my duty almost to the point of breaking our friendship. But--I'll have to stop short of that point." A quick smile came over Quarren's face, gay, affectionate: "You couldn't do that, Karl.... And don't worry. I'll cut out a lot of frills and try to do things that are worth while. I mean it, really. Don't worry, old fellow." "All right," said Westguard, smiling. CHAPTER II A masked dance, which for so long has been out of fashion in the world that pretends to it, was the experiment selected by Molly Wycherly for the warming up of her new house on Park Avenue.