of it, the very bottom-slime, was the hateful necessity of having
always, as long as the two men lived, to be civil to Barton Flamel.

VI

THE week in town had been sultry, and the men, in the Sunday
emancipation of white flannel and duck, filled the deck-chairs of the
yacht with their outstretched apathy, following, through a mist of
cigarette-smoke, the flitting inconsequences of the women. The part
was a small one--Flamel had few intimate friends--but composed of more
heterogeneous atoms than the little pools into which society usually
runs. The reaction from the chief episode of his earlier life had
bred in Glennard an uneasy distaste for any kind of personal saliency.
Cleverness was useful in business; but in society it seemed to him as
futile as the sham cascades formed by a stream that might have been used
to drive a mill. He liked the collective point of view that goes with
the civilized uniformity of dress-clothes, and his wife's attitude
implied the same preference; yet they found themselves slipping more
and more into Flamel's intimacy. Alexa had once or twice said that she
enjoyed meeting clever people; but her enjoyment took the negative form
of a smiling receptivity; and Glennard felt a growing preference for the
kind of people who have their thinking done for them by the community.

Still, the deck of the yacht was a pleasant refuge from the heat on
shore, and his wife's profile, serenely projected against the changing
blue, lay on his retina like a cool hand on the nerves. He had never
been more impressed by the kind of absoluteness that lifted her beauty
above the transient effects of other women, making the most harmonious
face seem an accidental collocation of features.

The ladies who directly suggested this comparison were of a kind
accustomed to take similar risks with more gratifying results. Mrs.
Armiger had in fact long been the triumphant alternative of those who
couldn't "see" Alexa Glennard's looks; and Mrs. Touchett's claims to
consideration were founded on that distribution of effects which is the
wonder of those who admire a highly cultivated country. The third lady
of the trio which Glennard's fancy had put to such unflattering uses,
was bound by circumstances to support the claims of the other two. This
was Mrs. Dresham, the wife of the editor of the Radiator. Mrs. Dresham
was a lady who had rescued herself from social obscurity by assuming the
role of her husband's exponent a