and acquainted with every one who is worth knowing.
Until within twenty-four hours I supposed that I was as much a part of
the social organization as I chose to be,--no more, no less. Now, the
best friend I have in the world tells me point blank that the very thing
I supposed was most to my credit is a bar across the path I have elected
to take. I'm not ready yet to admit it. Monty says that I've lost
something, but he's wrong: apparently the attributes he has in mind I
never even possessed."

"Then the more reason to exert yourself until you do possess them."

"But if I lack them, why haven't I felt the lack before?" he appealed.
"I'm thrown all the time with the very men on whom the social life of
Boston rests."

"Where, if I may ask?"

"In business, and at my clubs."

"But not in their homes?" Edith pursued.

"No," Cosden admitted; "there has never been any reason to meet them
there."

Edith folded her work deliberately and looked squarely at her companion.

"My friend," she said with decision, "'the time has come, the Walrus
said, to talk of many things.' Some one must set you right. You have too
much knowledge in other directions to be so childlike in this. If you
still look upon me as confidential adviser, I'll appoint myself that
one."

"I should be eternally grateful."

"Then don't be offended if I speak plainly. I believe that I understand
the situation exactly: you have pursued the even tenor of your way all
these years, following a definite plan, and accomplishing your set
purpose. In the confidence of having accomplished it, you decide that
the moment has arrived to exercise a side of your nature which up to
that moment has scarcely interested you, and you try to put your new
thought into execution as mechanically as you have carried through every
other purpose which you have ever had. Your election to your clubs, no
doubt, was the result of careful and business-like plans, laid down when
your name was first proposed, and followed up with the same
irreproachable persistency which would be applied to any other business
undertaking."

"Of course," he acknowledged: "that is the only way to put anything
through."

"So your clubs, which you have looked upon to certain extent as social
achievements, have been only a part of your every-day business routine,
after all?"

"Yes; if you choose to put it that way."

"Then let me tell you that however intimate you become with any man, you
are not adm