ment from any man might awaken
interest, but Estabrook was not any man. He represented the essence of
conventional society. He belonged to a family of well-preserved
traditions, a family whose reputation for conservative conduct and
manners of cold self-restraint was well known in a dozen cities. They
were that particular family, of a common enough name, which was known as
the Estabrookses Arbutus. Jermyn had had a dozen grandfathers who, from
one to another, had handed down the practice of law to him, as if for
the Estabrooks it was an heirloom.

"Perhaps I had better tell you from the beginning," said he, drawing the
back of his fine hand across his forehead. "For it is strange--strange!
And who can say what the ending will be?"

I counseled him to calm himself and asked that he eliminate as much as
possible all unnecessary details of his story. I shall repeat, then, as
accurately as possible, the story he told me. I will attempt to write it
in his own words....

BOOK II

THE AUTOMATIC SHEIK

CHAPTER I

A WOMAN AT TWENTY-TWO

Some men do not fall in love. I had supposed from the beginning of my
interest in such things that I was one of these men. I did not doubt
that all of us have an inherent tendency, perhaps based upon our coarser
natures, to love this or that woman thrown in our way by a fortunate or
unfortunate chance. But the traditions of our family were strong; I had
been educated by all those who were near to me in earlier life to look
upon marriage, not as a result of natural instinct so much as the result
of a careful and diplomatic choice of an alliance. I had been
taught--not in so many words, but by the accumulation of impressions
received in my home and in my youthful training--that one first
scrutinized a woman's inheritance of character, wealth, and position,
and as a second step fell in love with her.

This cannot be called snobbishness. It is prudence. And I followed this
course until I was nearly thirty years old. If the test of its success
lies in the fact that I had never had more than a temporary affection,
sometimes stimulated by the curve of a bare shoulder and sometimes by
the angle of a bright mind, then it had successfully kept me from the
altar.

And yet you shall see that at last I reversed the order of our
traditions; you shall see, too, that it re