her? They'd probably find her
an outcast."

"Couldn't papa look her up?" suggested Kathleen.

Mrs. Ames did not reply. She had no wish to discuss her husband, after
the affair of the previous evening. And, even in disregard of that,
she would not have gone to him with the matter. For she and her
consort, though living under the same roof, nevertheless saw each
other but seldom. At times they met in the household elevator; and for
the sake of appearances they managed to dine together with Kathleen in
a strained, unnatural way two or three times a week, at which times no
mention was ever made of the son who had been driven from the parental
roof. There were no exchanges of confidences or affection, and Mrs.
Ames knew but little of the working of his mentality. She was wholly
under the dominance of her masterful husband, merely an accessory to
his mode of existence. He used her, as he did countless others, to
buttress a certain side of his very complex life. As for assistance in
determining Carmen's status, there was none to be obtained from him,
strongly attracted by the young girl as he had already shown himself
to be. Indeed, she might be grateful if the attachment did not lead to
far unhappier consequences!

"Larry Beers said yesterday that he had something new," she replied
irrelevantly to Kathleen's question. "He has in tow a Persian dervish,
who sticks knives through his mouth, and drinks melted lead, and bites
red-hot pokers, and a lot of such things. Larry says he's the most
wonderful he's ever seen, and I'm going to have him and a real Hindu
_swami_ for next Wednesday evening."

New York's conspicuous set indeed would have languished often but for
the social buffoonery of the clever Larry Beers, who devised new
diversions and stimulating mental condiments for the jaded brains of
that gilded cult. His table ballets, his bizarre parlor circuses, his
cunningly devised fads in which he set forth his own inimitable
antics, won him the motley and the cap and bells of this tinseled
court, and forced him well out into the glare of publicity, which was
what he so much desired.

And by that much it made him as dangerous as any stupid anarchist who
toils by candle-light over his crude bombs. For by it he taught the
great mass of citizenship who still retained their simple ideals of
reason and respect that there existed a social caste, worshipers of
the golden calf, to whom the simple, humdrum virtues were quite
unen