erchief to her
eyes. Her brother's angry words had stung her far more cruelly than she
was willing to admit. His counter arraignment of her had struck home.
What was she, what did she think about things? In her zeal for him, had
she not overlooked herself?

She cast her eyes around the room, reeking with the sweet sickliness of
dead cigarettes. She thought of the high stakes that had passed at her
tables, she saw again the wan, tired, hard faces of the players, their
feverish, greedy fingers; and she heard, as in an echo, their blithe
cruelties, their empty blandishments. And these people, she reflected
bitterly, were her friends--the only ones she had.

Roger had put the question to her squarely. What was she? The words
struck her like a blow in the face. And what did she think--about
anything? And the weight of the question was none the lighter for being
asked for the second time in the same day. Roger the immature boy over
whom she had allowed herself to stand in judgment, and Brent Good, the
pitiful vagabond, had both weighed her in the balance and found her
wanting.

She shuddered at the arid uselessness of what she called her mind. The
grotesque procession of her daily thoughts passed before her in review.
She tried to close her eyes and shut the ghastly picture out, but could
not.

Riches, health, intelligence of a sort--these things were hers. What had
she done with them? The answer hurt, almost physically. Emptiness,
idleness, futility ... was there anything else in herself, her friends,
her whole life? Had she justified existence?

Suddenly she realised that it was cold. She shivered, and turned out the
light.

II

Roger awoke the following morning in a repentant mood. Slowly and
painfully he marshalled the facts of the preceding evening, dim and hazy
some of them, while others stood out with humiliating and alarming
distinctness. And the more he analysed them, the more unpleasantly he
became aware that Judith had been in deadly earnest. In his first
hopelessness, he caught illogically at one faint chance. His sister's
great fear seemed to be that this latest escapade might leak out. The
fight had been the starting point of all her amazing change of front.
Well, he could prevent it from leaking out, by swallowing his pride.
Perhaps after all he had been over-hasty.

Accordingly, acting on this new resolution, Roger caught Faxon's eye as
they were rising from table, and nodded.

The latter waited