income shooting up
toughs on the water-front. But your having done it will put you in the
lime-light where people will notice you. And being noticed is the
beginning of success in this-man's-town. I'm not sure it isn't the end,
too. Just see how the head waiter fell all over himself when you came
in. I expect he's telling that bunch at the long table yonder who you
are now."

"Let him," returned Banneker comfortably, his long-bred habit of
un-self-consciousness standing him in good stead. "They'll all forget it
soon enough."

As he glanced over at the group around the table, the man who was
apparently acting as host caught his eye and nodded in friendly fashion.

"Oh, you know Marrineal, do you?" asked Cressey in surprise.

"I've seen him, but I've never spoken to him. He dines sometimes in a
queer little restaurant way downtown, just off the Swamp. Who is he,
anyway?"

"Puzzle. Nobody in the clubs knows him. He's a spender. Bit of a
rounder, too, I expect. Plays the Street, and beats it, too."

"Who's the little beauty next him?"

"You a rising light of Park Row, and not know Betty Raleigh? She killed
'em dead in London in romantic comedy and now she's come back here to
repeat."

"Oh, yes. Opening to-night, isn't she? I've got a seat." He looked over
at Marrineal, who was apparently protesting against his neighbor's
reversed wine-glass. "So that's Mr. Marrineal's little style of game, is
it?" He spoke crudely, for the apparition of the girl was quite touching
in its youth, and delight, and candor of expression, whereas he had read
into Marrineal's long, handsome, and blandly mature face a touch of the
satyr. He resented the association.

"No; it isn't," replied Cressey promptly. "If it is, he's in the wrong
pew. Miss Raleigh is straight as they make 'em, from all I hear."

"She looks it," admitted Banneker.

"At that, she's in a rather sporty lot. Do you know that chap three
seats to her left?"

Banneker considered the diner, a round-faced, high-colored, youthful man
of perhaps thirty-five, with a roving and merry eye. "No," he answered.
"I never saw him before."

"That's Del Eyre," remarked Cressey casually, and appearing not to look
at Banneker.

"A friend of yours?" The indifference of the tone indicated to his
companion either that Banneker did not identify Delavan Eyre by his
marriage, or that he maintained extraordinary control over himself, or
that the queer, romantic stories of Io Welland's