a man for yeahs and
yeahs, and then come back on him, 'deed I have," he said,
mysteriously. "An' again, it might be you got a floatin' kidney,
sah. Aftah dey once teah loose, dey sometimes don't make no trouble
for quite a while."

When Wanning went to his room he did not go to bed. He sat up until
he heard the voices of his wife and daughters in the hall below. His
own bed somehow frightened him. In all the years he had lived in
this house he had never before looked about his room, at that bed,
with the thought that he might one day be trapped there, and might
not get out again. He had been ill, of course, but his room had
seemed a particularly pleasant place for a sick man; sunlight,
flowers,--agreeable, well-dressed women coming in and out.

Now there was something sinister about the bed itself, about its
position, and its relation to the rest of the furniture.

II

The next morning, on his way downtown, Wanning got off the subway
train at Astor Place and walked over to Washington Square. He
climbed three flights of stairs and knocked at his son's studio.
Harold, dressed, with his stick and gloves in his hand, opened the
door. He was just going over to the Brevoort for breakfast. He
greeted his father with the cordial familiarity practised by all the
"boys" of his set, clapped him on the shoulder and said in his
light, tonsilitis voice:

"Come in, Governor, how delightful! I haven't had a call from you in
a long time."

He threw his hat and gloves on the writing table. He was a perfect
gentleman, even with his father.

Florence said the matter with Harold was that he had heard people
say he looked like Byron, and stood for it.

What Harold would stand for in such matters was, indeed, the best
definition of him. When he read his play "The Street Walker" in
drawing rooms and one lady told him it had the poetic symbolism of
Tchekhov, and another said that it suggested the biting realism of
Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen
of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next
room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the
absurd,--a throaty staccato, with never a downward inflection,
trustfully striving to please.

"Just going out?" his father asked. "I won't keep you. Your mother
told you I had a discouraging session with Seares?"

"So awfully sorry you've had this bother, Governor; just as sorry as
I can be. No question about it's comin