me ten days previous. Condy turned cold upon
the instant, hurled the tooth-brush across the room, and dropped into a
chair with a groan of despair. Miss Flagg was giving a theatre party
for the same affair, and he remembered now that he had promised to join
her party as well, forgetting all about the engagement he had made with
Miss Sargeant. It was impossible at this late hour to accept either
one of the young women's invitations without offending the other.

"Well, I won't go to EITHER, that's all," he vociferated aloud to the
opposite wall. "I'll send 'em each a wire, and say that I'm sick or
have got to go down to the office, and--and, by George! I'll go up and
see Blix, and we'll read and make things to eat."

And no sooner had this alternative occurred to him than it appeared too
fascinating to be resisted. A weight seemed removed from his mind.
When it came to that, what amusement would he have at either affair?

"Sit up there with your shirt-front starched like a board," he
blustered, "and your collar throttling you, and smile till your face is
sore, and reel off small talk to a girl whose last name you can't
remember! Do I have any fun, does it do me any good, do I get ideas for
yarns? What do I do it for? I don't know."

While speaking he had been kicking off his tight shoes and such of his
full dress as he had already put on, and with a feeling of enormous
relief turned again to his sack suit of tweed. "Lord, these feel
better!" he exclaimed, as he substituted the loose business suit for
the formal rigidity of his evening dress. It was with a sensation of
positive luxury that he put on a "soft" shirt of blue cheviot and his
tan walking-shoes.

"But no more red scarfs," he declared, as he knotted his black satin
"club" before the mirror. "She WAS right there." He put his cigarettes
in his pocket, caught up his gloves and stick, clapped on his hat, and
started for the Bessemers' flat with a feeling of joyous expectancy he
had not known for days.

Evidently Blix had seen him coming, for she opened the door herself;
and it suited her humor for the moment to treat him as a peddler or
book-agent.

"No, no," she said airily, her head in the air as she held the door.
"No, we don't want any to-day. We HAVE the biography of Abraham
Lincoln. Don't want to subscribe to any Home Book of Art. We're not
artistic; we use drapes in our parlors. Don't want 'The Wives and
Mothers of Great Men.'"

But Cond