He was not a financier, but he handled small interests well and he had built up a comfortable fortune. From being in debt before he married, he had advanced slowly until now his investments made a good showing. He could probably live on the income to-morrow if he chose.... He blew a little ring of smoke.... His investments and what they were mounting to was a kind of epic poem to Eldridge’s slow-moving mind.... Yes--he would take a few shares of the café stock. He looked thoughtfully at his cigar and calculated how many, and what they would be worth.... The music had taken the form of a young boy with a violin who stood absorbed in his playing, a kind of quick fervor in his face and figure. The voices had ceased and only now and then a cup clicked. Eldridge lifted his eyes from the cigar. The woman in the alcove had moved nearer the end of the seat and was watching the boy, her lips parted on a half smile. The cigar dropped from Eldridge’s fingers. He stared at the woman--stared--and stirred vaguely. She turned a little and Eldridge reached out his hand and drew a quick curtain between them. Through the slit he could still see the figure of the woman, her head thrown a little back, her eyes following the bow of music as it rose and fell, and the lips smiling in happy content--He drew a quick breath. Slowly a deep flush came into his face--How dared Rosalind come here! It was a respectable place--of course--but how dared she spend her time and money--his money and time that belonged to her home and her children--in a place like this?... Her hands were folded in her lap, and her eyes followed the music. She had barely touched the glass on the table before her, he noted, or the plate of little biscuit. She seemed to sit in a dream.... His mind whirled. Six hours before he had said good-by to her at the breakfast table--a plain, drab woman in shabby clothes, with steel-rimmed spectacles that looked at him with a little line between the eyes and reminded him that he needed to order coal for the range and a new clothes-line.... He had ordered the coal, but he recalled suddenly that he had forgotten the clothes-line; he had intended to see if he could get one cheaper at a wholesale place he knew of; his memory held the clothes-line fast in the left lobe of his brain while the grey matter of the right lobe whirled excitedly about the woman in the alcove. [Illustration: 0025]