and
luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered,
the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable
slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he
read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor
moral. He liked to relive in dream fashion the years of early
endeavour--of his married life with Hannah. After he finished the
reverie he would tell himself with a flash of honesty, "Gad, it might
as well have happened to some other fellow--for all the good it does
you." Nothing seemed real to Constantine except his check book and his
wife's monument.

It was still to dawn upon him that his daughter partly despised him.
He had always said that no one loved him but his child, and that no
one but his child mattered so far as he was concerned. Since
Beatrice's marriage he had become restless, wretched, desperately
lonesome; he found himself missing Steve quite as much as he missed
Beatrice. Their letters were unsatisfactory since they were chiefly
concerned with things--endless things that they coveted or had bought
or wanted in readiness for their return. As he sat watching the lawn
men gossip he knitted his black brows and wondered if he ought to sell
the mansion and be done with it. Then it occurred to him that
grandchildren playing on the velvety lawn would make it quite worth
while. With a thrill of anticipation he began to plan for his
grandchildren and to wonder if they, too, would be eternally concerned
with things.

As he recalled Mary's defiance he chuckled. "A ten-dollar-a-week raise
was cheap for such a woman," he thought.

Meantime, Trudy informed the Faithful family at supper: "Gay has
telephoned that he is coming to-night. Were you going to use the
parlour, Mary?" A mere formality always observed for no reason at
all.

"No, I'm going to water the garden. It's as dry as Sahara."

Luke groaned.

"Don't make Luke help you. He's stoop-shouldered enough from study
without making him carry sprinkling cans," Mrs. Faithful objected.

"Nonsense! It's good for him, and he will be through in an hour."

"Too late for the first movie show," expostulated Luke.

"A world tragedy," his sister answered.

"I wanted to go to-night," her mother insisted. "It's a lovely story.
Mrs. Bowen was in to tell me about it--all about a Russian war bride.
They built a whole town and burnt it up at the end of the story. I
guess it cost half a m