aside.

"You threatened me," he said resentfully, but with drunken dignity. "You
were going to smash me; I wish to say that now you can smash and be
damned! I have the money--"

"Oh, come, Marsh! Don't you feel cut up about that; I didn't mean to
make you mad; you mustn't hold that against me!"

"You come to my office to-morrow and get your money," said Langham,
still with dignity. "I've been under a great strain getting that money,
and now I'm done with you--"

Gilmore laughed.

"What are you laughing at?"

"You, you fool! But you aren't done with me; we'll be closer friends
than ever after this. Just now you are too funny for me to take
seriously. You go home and sleep off this drunk; that's my advice to
you! I'd give a good deal to know where you have been and what sort of
a fool you have been making of yourself since I saw you last!" added
Gilmore.

"Don't you worry about me; I'm all right. What I want to say is, lend me
your keys; I can't go home this way--lend me your keys and I'll go to
your rooms and sleep it off."

"All right, Marsh; think you can get there?"

"Of course; I'm all right."

"And you'll go there if I give you my keys--you'll go nowhere else?"

"Of course I won't, Andy!"

"You won't stop to talk with any one?"

"Who'll I find to talk with at this time of the night?" laughed the
drunken man derisively. "It's three o'clock! Say, Andy, who'll I find to
talk to?"

"By God, I hope no one, you fool!" muttered Gilmore.

"Well, give me the keys, Andy. I'll go along and get to bed, and I want
you to forget this conversation--"

"Oh, I'll forget it all right, Marsh--but you won't after you come to
your senses!" he added under his breath.

"Give me the keys--thanks. Good night, Andy! I'll see you in the
morning."

He reeled uncertainly down the path, cursing his treacherous footing as
he went. At the gate he paused and waved an unsteady farewell to the
gambler, who stood on the porch staring after him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BEAUTY OF ELIZABETH

His interview with Evelyn Langham left North with a sense of moral
nausea, yet he felt he had somehow failed in his comprehension of her,
that she had not meant him to understand her as he had; that, after all,
perhaps the significance he had given to her words was of his own
imagining.

He waited in his room until she should have time to be well on her way
home, then hurried down-stairs. He was to dine at the Herberts' at seven
o