ure's got him under her thumb. (I'll see him today and give him a
piece of my mind for the lies he's told me.) And if this girl has
inherited her mother's brains, she's equal to anything."

"I thought that your Mary was composite perfection."

"Never said anything of the sort. Didn't I tell you she always kept us
guessing? I sometimes used to think that if it hadn't been for her
breeding and the standards that involves, and her wealth and position,
she'd have made a first-class adventuress."

"Was she a good liar?"

"She was insolently truthful, but I'm certain she wouldn't have
hesitated at a whopping lie if it would have served her purpose. She
was certainly _rusee_."

"Well, the dinner should be highly interesting with all these
undercurrents. I'll call for you at a quarter past eight. I must run
now and do my column."

Clavering, often satirical and ironic, was positively brutal that
afternoon. The latest play, book, moving picture, the inefficiency of
the New York police, his afflicting correspondents, were hacked to the
bone. When he had finished, his jangling nerves were unaccountably
soothed. Other nerves would shriek next morning. Let 'em. He'd been
honest enough, and if he chose to use a battle-axe instead of Toledo
steel that was his privilege.

He called down for a messenger boy and strolled to the window to soothe
his nerves still further. Dusk had fallen. Every window of the high
stone buildings surrounding Madison Square was an oblong of light. It
was a symphony of gray and gold, of which he never tired. It invested
business with romance and beauty. The men behind those radiant panels,
thinking of nothing less, made their brief contribution to the beauty
of the world, transported the rapt spectator to a realm of pure
loveliness.

A light fall of snow lay on the grass and benches, the statues and
trees of the Square. Motors were flashing and honking below and over
on Fifth Avenue. The roar of the great city came up to him like a
flood over a broken dam. Black masses were pouring toward the subways.
Life! New York was the epitome of life. He enjoyed forcing his way
through those moving masses, but it interested him even more to feel
above, aloof, as he did this evening. Those tides swept on as
unconscious of the watchers so high above them as of the soaring beauty
of the Metropolitan Tower. Ground hogs, most of them, but part of the
ever changing, ever fascinating, metrop