In an article on the subject RoBards found him blamed for the attitude of “unfledged college boys who respect nothing in the shape of woman, and exult in his authority to throw overboard the slight remains of the traditionary reverence which inconveniently bridles their passions, and restrains their egotisms.” It was into such an atmosphere that the young girl Immy and the lad Keith must emerge from childhood. In such a dangerous world they must live their life. RoBards shuddered at the menace. CHAPTER XXXIV Patty had a linen cover stretched tight over the parlor carpet. She got in an appalling amount of supper material; oyster soup in gallons, _dinde aux truffes_ by the pound, ice cream in gallons, jellies, custards, cakes, preserves; punch by the keg, and champagne bottles by the regiment. Everybody came. St. John’s Park was a-roar with carriages and bawling coachmen and footmen, some of them in livery. Tactless people set Patty’s teeth on edge by saying that it was well worth while coming “downtown” to see her; and Immy such a lady! She’d be making Patty a grandmother any of these days! For a time RoBards enjoyed the thrill, the dressed-up old women and old men and the young people all hilarious and beautiful with youth. He had his acid tastes, too, for many of the people congratulated him on the reported successes of his old crony, Captain Chalender. He was reputed to be a millionaire at least, and one of the best loved men in California—and coming home soon, it was rumored. And was that true? “So I’ve heard,” RoBards must murmur a dozen times, wondering how far away Chalender would have to go to be really absent from his home. The house throbbed with dance music, the clamor and susurrus of scandal along the wall line of matrons, the laughter; the eddies the dancers made; young men in black and pink girls in vast skirts like huge many-petaled roses twirled round and round. It amazed RoBards to see how popular Immy was. She was wrangled over by throngs of men. Her color was higher than her liquid rouge explained; her eyes were bright, and she spoke with an aristocratic lilt her father had never heard her use. Keith was as tall and as handsome as any young blade there, and his father could hardly believe that the boy could be so gallant, so gay, so successful with so many adoring girls. It was good to see so much joy in the home he had made for the children whose sorrows had been so many and so real. But as the evening grew old and the crowd thickened, his cheerfulness flagged. Perhaps he was merely fatigued with the outgo of welcome, sickened by having to say and hear the same things so many times. But he saw the picnic becoming a revel. The dancers, whether waltzing or polking, seemed to increase in audacity, in blind or shameless abandonment to thoughts and moods that belonged to solitude if anywhere.