Janet's
vocabulary might be as primitive as lightning, but unlike lightning it
never failed to strike.

"That old Zattiany woman." "She's a thousand years old and nobody
cares what she does." "That rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if
she's a day." "Much happier than your grandmother." The phrases
flashed into his mind when he awoke and echoed in his ears all day. No
doubt similar phrases, less crude, but equally scorching, were being
tossed from one end of New York Society to the other. If Janet knew of
his devotion to Madame Zattiany others must, for it could only have
come to her on the wings of gossip. He was being ridiculed by people
who grasped nothing beyond the fact that the woman was fifty-eight and
the man thirty-four. Of course it would be but a nine days' wonder and
like all other social phenomena grow too stale for comment, but
meanwhile he should feel as if he were frying on a gridiron. Anne
Goodrich would merely exclaim: "Abominable." Marian Lawrence would
draw in her nostrils and purr: "Lee was always an erratic and
impressionable boy. Just like him to fall in love with an old woman.
And she's really a beautiful blonde--once more. Poor Lee." As for
Gora and Suzan Forbes--well, Gora would understand, and impale them
sympathetically in her next novel, and Suzan would read up on
endocrines, blend them adroitly with psychology, and write an article
for the _Yale Review_.

He avoided the office and wrote his column at home. Luckily a favorite
old comedian had died recently. He could fill up with reminiscence and
anecdote. But it was soon done and he was back in his chair with his
thoughts again.

It had been his intention when he awakened on Sunday after a few hours
of unrefreshing sleep to dispatch his work as quickly as possible, take
a long walk, and then return to his rooms and keep the hours that must
intervene until Monday afternoon, sacred to Mary Zattiany. But if man
wishes to regulate his life, and more particularly his meditations, to
suit himself he would be wise to retire to a mountain top. Civilized
life is a vast woof and the shuttle pursues its weaving and
counter-weaving with no regard for the plans of men. It was impossible
to ignore Mrs. Oglethorpe's appeal, and it was equally impossible to
refuse to aid in the hunt for that damnable Janet when her distracted
father and his own intimate friend took his cooperation as a matter of
course. And even if he had remain