e of scorn.

"It is your turn, Mr. Lorimer. You know him better than the rest of us.
What shall you say to him?"

"I know him so well that I rarely talk to him about his singing,"
Lorimer replied, with sudden gravity. "Thayer is too large a man to
smack his lips over sugar-plums. He knows exactly what I think of his
voice, that it is one of the best baritone voices I have ever heard. He
also knows that I am perfectly aware of the fact when he sings unusually
badly or unusually well. Under those conditions, there is no especial
need of our discussing the matter. One can have reservations with one's
friends, you know." As he spoke, his eyes met those of Beatrix, and a
smile lighted his gravity.

At a first glance, Sidney Lorimer produced the impression of being a
remarkably handsome man. The second glance, while it strengthened the
impression, nevertheless set one wondering what had created it. His
figure, his features, his coloring were all good, yet they were in no
way remarkable. A wiry, nervous, clean-cut man, with brown hair and
eyes, a slim, straight nose, and a well-set head, he would have
commanded little attention had it not been for the nameless stamp set
upon him by his training at an English public-school. It is impossible
to analyze this stamp, yet it exists and insists upon recognition.
Political life had called the elder Lorimer to England, and he had
judged it better to take his only child with him and drop him into Eton
than to leave him in America and send him to St. Paul's. He did it as a
matter of convenience, not of theory; but when his boy was ready for a
Yale diploma, the father confessed to himself that he was pleased with
the result of the experiment. Young Lorimer would never be an important
factor in the world's development; but he was an uncommonly attractive
fellow, and could hold his own in any position where chance would be
likely to place him. Only his lower lip betrayed the fact that his
mother had been a woman of uncurbed nerves.

It was the evening of the twentieth, and Lorimer was distinctly nervous.
He liked Arlt and was anxious for his success; but his anxiety for Arlt
was as nothing in comparison with that which he felt for Thayer, to whom
he gave the adoration that a weak man sometimes offers to one
immeasurably his superior. Probably Lorimer's whole life would contain
no better year than the one he had spent with Thayer in Berlin. Thayer's
influence was strongly good, and Lorim