resented to him five years before when Mr.
Vandeford had installed his Lares and Penates in the tall building on
Seventy-third Street, some of these Lares and Penates being Mr.
Farraday's extra linen and clothes.

"That you, Denny?" Mr. Vandeford asked as he switched on his light and
took a hurried glance at a clock on his mantel which registered the hour
of 2 A. M.

"Yes," answered Mr. Farraday, as he came to the door of Mr. Vandeford's
sleeping apartment. "A thought suddenly struck me, and I stopped in to
explode it at you and sleep here."

"Fire away!"

"My mater is coming to town the first of the week to have her glasses
changed, and I'm going to telephone out to her to-morrow and ask her to
write Miss Adair to have dinner with us informally at the town house
while she is here. You know mater's mother was from old Kentucky, and
she'll adore the child. Think that's good thinking?"

"Fine," answered Mr. Vandeford, with a glow under his ribs about which
he said nothing. Men are vastly inarticulate, but they have various
means of communication, and Mr. Vandeford now felt that in his care of
his author Mr. Dennis Farraday would understand.

"You know I am on new ground, old chap, but--but how about asking Miss
Lindsey, too?" Mr. Farraday questioned, with great diffidence.

"Fine!" agreed Mr. Vandeford, with accelerated glow under his ribs that
Miss Lindsey had been proposed when Miss Hawtry might have been invited.
"Get to bed, can't you, you Indian, you? Night!"

"Good-night!" answered Mr. Farraday, as he departed to his own room.

And still Mr. Vandeford did not sleep.

Flat upon his back he lay and faced, analyzed, and card-indexed his
situation and himself.

"Five years of myself given to that gutter girl and I never even cared;
let her annex me for purposes of parade and publicity, and thought it
funny sport. Wasted? Something to be deducted for pleasure in artistic
success of "Dear Geraldine," but what will it cost me if I have to stand
by and see her make old Denny hate himself as I do myself, or worse?
She'll not stop short with him, and how do I know what he'll do? The
money don't matter, but the--cleanliness does. If I go in to save him,
she gave me notice to-night that she would go for that gray-eyed girl.
What can she do to her? First, kill her play, no matter what I do to
build up a success for the kiddie to cancel that mortgage. Second: do
something, say something that will kill that look in th