t are you talking about?" he said sharply.

"I'm talking about Cecile White," continued Quair, looking rather oddly
at the sculptor out of his slightly prominent eyes. "I didn't suppose
you could be interested in any woman--not that I mind your interfering
with any little affair between Cecile and me--"

"There wasn't any."

"I beg your pardon, Drene--"

"There wasn't any!" repeated Drene, with curt contempt. "Don't talk
about her, anyway."

"You mean I'm not to talk about a common artist's model--"

"Not that way."

"Oh. Is she yours?"

"She isn't anybody's, I fancy. Therefore, let her alone, or I'll throw
you out of doors."

Quair said to Guilder after they had departed:

"Fancy old Drene playing about with that girl on a strictly pious basis!
He's doubtless dub enough to waste his time. But what's in it for her?"

"Perhaps a little unaccustomed masculine decency."

"Everybody is decent enough to her as far as I know."

"Including yourself?"

"Certainly, including myself," retorted Quair, adding naively: "Besides,
I knew any attempt at philandering would be time wasted."

"Yet you tried it," mused Guilder, entering his big touring car and
depositing a bundle of blue-prints and linen tracing paper at his own
ponderous feet. Quair followed him and spoke briefly to the chauffeur,
then:

"Tried nothing," he said. "A little chaff, that's all. When it comes to
a man like Jack Graylock going so far as to ask her to marry him, good
night, nurse! Nothing doing, even for me."

"Even for you," repeated Guilder in his moderate and always modulated
voice. "Well, if she's escaped you and Graylock, she's beyond any danger
from Drene, I fancy."

Quair smiled appreciatively, as though a delicate compliment had been
offered him. Several times on the way to call on Graylock he insisted on
stopping the car at as many celebrated cafes. Guilder patiently awaited
him in the car and each time Quair emerged from the cafe bar a little
more flushed and a trifle jauntier than when he had entered.

He was a man so perfectly attired and so scrupulously fastidious about
his person that Guilder often speculated as to just why Quair always
seemed to him a trifle soiled.

Now, looking him over as he climbed into the car, unusually red in the
face, breathing out the aroma of spirits through his little, pinched
nostrils, a faint sensation of disgust came over the senior member of
the firm as though the junior member were physic