alling list, and seeking to increase its variety? Or was he slowly
gathering up some of the broken ties, ready for the day when once more
he should leave his prison and walk out among them, a free man? Of two
things, though, Olive was assured. The change had started a good two
months earlier, had dated, as nearly as she could reckon backwards,
from the time of Whittenden's brief visit. And the change, whatever
else its alterations in the life of Opdyke, had made not one grain of
difference with their friendship. Indeed, it seemed to Olive now and
then that Opdyke turned to her society the more eagerly after a
protracted season of receiving varied calls. However, well he might
turn to Olive! It was fifteen months, now, since his accident, fifteen
months that the brace of New York surgeons had professed their
inability to predict a future. Uncertainty like that is bound to tell
on any man; and, throughout it all, Olive Keltridge never once had
failed him.

That Opdyke was renewing, after his limited fashion, many of his old
associations was a fact evident to the whole town. The knowledge that
he was lowering his year-long barricade, as a matter of course, brought
to his door a horde of visitors bound to be more or less unwelcome. As
a matter of fact, on one pretext or another, nine tenths of them were
turned away. Ramsdell saw to that. Despite his misplaced aspirates, he
possessed a perfect genius for uttering gracious fibs with a totally
impenetrable smile of deprecation. Moreover, he knew from long
experience Reed's choice in people, and he read strangers keenly.
Therefore more than one potential visitor, moved by a combination of
curiosity and benevolence, was assured that "Mr. Hopdyke 'as 'ad a very
bad night, and is just gone off to sleep," although Dolph Dennison's
coat tails or Olive Keltridge's linen skirt might have been vanishing
through the doorway as the less welcome guest came in at the front
gate. In spite of the moral certainties of the later guest, it was
impossible to prove that Ramsdell was lying flagrantly. One could only
smile, and hand in a card, with the agreeable surety that it would be
referred to the upstairs potentate and pigeonholed in Ramsdell's
retentive memory as ticket for admission later on, or else a permanent
rejection label, past all argument or gainsaying.

Prather, the novelist, was one of the first names on the lengthening
list of those who were to be admitted at all sorts of hours.