his advance, understood all he had
got from Squibs and books, from Betty, from Goodhue, from Princeton;
but, although he easily conquered his first impulse to strike, his rage
glowed the hotter because it was confined. As he passed close he heard
Lambert whisper:

"Good man!"

But even then Wandel wouldn't let him go, and the music had stopped
again, and only the undefinable shadows of women's voices reached him.
He tried to shake off Wandel who had followed him to the hall. He
couldn't wait. He had to enter that moving, chattering crowd to find out
what Sylvia had decided.

"Go downstairs, great man," Wandel was whispering, "get a cab, and wait
in it at the door, so that you will be handy when I bring the infant
Bacchus out."

"I'd rather not," George said, impatiently. "Someone else will do."

"By no means. Expediency, my dear friend, and the general welfare.
Hercules for little Bacchus."

He couldn't refuse. Wandel and Goodhue, and, for that matter all of
Dalrymple's friends, those girls in there, depended on him; yet he knew
it was a bad business for him and for Dalrymple; and he wanted above all
other things to pass for a moment through that brilliant screen that
moved perpetually between him and Sylvia.

He waited in the shadows of the cab until Dalrymple and Wandel left the
building. Wandel motioned the other into the cab. Dalrymple obeyed,
willingly enough, swinging his stick, and humming off the key. Probably
Wandel's diplomacy. Wandel jumped in, called an address to the driver,
and slammed the door.

"Where are you taking him?" George asked.

For the first time Dalrymple seemed to realize who the silent man in the
shadows was.

"I'm not going on any party with Morton," he said, sullenly.

"You can go to the devil," Wandel said, pleasantly, "as long as you keep
away from decent people until you're decent yourself."

"No," George said. "He's going home or I have nothing more to do with
it."

"Perhaps you're right," Wandel agreed, "but you can fancy I had to offer
him something better than that to get him out."

He tapped on the pane and gave the driver the new address. Dalrymple
started to rise.

"Won't go home--you keep your dirty hands off me, Morton. You----"

"Hercules!" softly from Wandel.

George grasped Dalrymple's arms, pulled him down, held him as in a
vise. Dalrymple raved. Wandel laughed pleasantly.

"Dirty hands," flashed through George's brain. Did Dalrymple know
anything,