f which, if
there had been any, he performed wherever he happened to be. Morrison's
father had made a fortune in leather during the war. And Carley
remembered Glenn telling her he had seen two whole blocks in Paris
piled twenty feet deep with leather army goods that were never used and
probably had never been intended to be used. Morrison represented the
not inconsiderable number of young men in New York who had gained at
the expense of the valiant legion who had lost. But what had Morrison
gained? Carley raised her eyes to gaze steadily at him. He looked
well-fed, indolent, rich, effete, and supremely self-satisfied. She
could not see that he had gained anything. She would rather have been a
crippled ruined soldier.

"Larry, I fear gain and loss are mere words," she said. "The thing that
counts with me is what you are."

He stared in well-bred surprise, and presently talked of a new dance
which had lately come into vogue. And from that he passed on to gossip
of the theatres. Once between courses of the dinner he asked Carley to
dance, and she complied. The music would have stimulated an Egyptian
mummy, Carley thought, and the subdued rose lights, the murmur of gay
voices, the glide and grace and distortion of the dancers, were
exciting and pleasurable. Morrison had the suppleness and skill of a
dancing-master. But he held Carley too tightly, and so she told him, and
added, "I imbibed some fresh pure air while I was out West--something
you haven't here--and I don't want it all squeezed out of me."

The latter days of July Carley made busy--so busy that she lost her tan
and appetite, and something of her splendid resistance to the dragging
heat and late hours. Seldom was she without some of her friends. She
accepted almost any kind of an invitation, and went even to Coney
Island, to baseball games, to the motion pictures, which were three
forms of amusement not customary with her. At Coney Island, which she
visited with two of her younger girl friends, she had the best time
since her arrival home. What had put her in accord with ordinary people?
The baseball games, likewise pleased her. The running of the players and
the screaming of the spectators amused and excited her. But she hated
the motion pictures with their salacious and absurd misrepresentations
of life, in some cases capably acted by skillful actors, and in others a
silly series of scenes featuring some doll-faced girl.

But she refused to go horseback r