d
failing.

"Why not?"

"Because you think only of yourself and of what you wish," she
surprised him by answering. "Why not think of the other chap
occasionally?"

He paused in the lighting of his pipe. "Oh--you mean my coming here."
He looked like an unjustly punished child without redress. "You mean
to consign me to the gloom of the grill room or one of those slippery
leather chairs in a far corner of the club? Come, you can't say that.
I won't listen if you do. I just want to be friends with someone."

With unsuspected coquetry she suggested: "Why not your wife?"

"We're not friends--merely married." He lit his pipe and flipped the
match away. "Cheap to say, isn't it? Don't look at me like that; you
make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as
directly as a small boy aims his snowball. Why?"

"It wouldn't do the slightest good to tell you what I think."

"Yes, it would; someone must tell me. I've never been as lonesome in
my life as now--when I'm a rich man and the husband of a very lovely
woman. It sort of chills me to the marrow at first thought. I've been
in a delirium, quite irresponsible. These last few months I've been
coming down to earth. Only instead of getting my feet planted firmly
on the sod I think I've struck a quicksand bed. I say, lend us a
hand."

"Why ask me?"

"I don't just know. I don't think I shall ever be quite so sure of
anything again. After all, a person has just so much capacity for joy
and sorrow, and so much energy, and so much will power, allotted at
birth; and if he chooses to go burn it all up in one fell swoop doing
one thing--he is at liberty to do so; but he is not given any second
helping. Isn't that true? Quite a terrible thing to realize when you
know you used up your joy allotment in anticipation--and it has been
so much keener and finer than any of the realization. And all my
energy went into making money the easiest way I could; but it does not
pay."

Mary clasped her hands tightly in her lap; she was afraid to let him
see her joy at the long-awaited confession.

"Yet you ask me, a reliable machine, to help you in your perplexities?"

"I don't think of you as a capable machine any more. I used to, that
is true enough. I didn't know or care whether your hair was red or
your eyes green--but I know now that you have gray eyes, and----"

"You really want to know my opinions?" she interrupted, breathlessly.

"As much as I used to seek out the