"Iff," said he, "when a man's the sort of a man who can fall out of love
and in again--with another woman, of course--inside a week--what do you
call him?"

"Human," announced Iff after mature consideration of the problem.

This was unsatisfactory; Staff yearned to be called fickle.

"Human? How's that?" he insisted.

"I mean that the human man hasn't got much to say about falling in or
out of love. The women take care of all that for him. Look at your Miss
Landis--yours as was.... You don't mind my buttin' in?"

"Go on," said Staff grimly.

"Anybody with half an eye, always excepting you, could see she'd made up
her mind to hook that Arkroyd pinhead on account of his money. She was
just waiting for a fair chance to give you the office--preferably, of
course, after she'd nailed that play of yours."

"Well," said Staff, "she's lost that, too."

"Serves you both right."

There was a pause wherein Staff sought to fathom the meaning of this
last utterance of Mr. Iff's.

"I take it," resumed the latter with a sidelong look--"pardon a father's
feelings of delicacy--I take it, you're meaning Nelly?"

"How did you guess that?" demanded Staff, startled.

"Right, eh?"

"Yes--no--I don't know--"

"Well, if you don't know the answer any better 'n that, take a word of
advice from an old bird: you get her to tell you. She's known it ever
since she laid eyes on you."

"You mean she--I--" Staff stammered eagerly.

"I mean nobody knows anything about a woman's heart but herself; but she
knows it backwards and all the time."

"Then you don't think I've got any show?"

"Oh, Lord!" complained Iff. "Honest, you gimme a pain. Go on and do your
own thinking."

Staff subsided, imagining a vain thing: that the mantle of dignity in
which he wrapped himself successfully cloaked his sense of injury. Iff
smiled a meaningless smile up at the inscrutable skies. And the moonlit
miles slipped beneath the wheels like a torrent of moulten silver.

At length--it seemed as if many hours must have swung crashing into
eternity since they had left New York--Staff was conscious of a
perceptible diminution of speed; he was able to get his breath with less
effort, had no longer to snatch it by main strength from the greedy
clutches of the whirlwind. The reeling chiaroscuro of the countryside
seemed suddenly to become calm, settling into an intelligible, more or
less orderly arrangement of shining hills and shadowed hollows,
spreadin