staid of the
thinning old guard of ancestor-worshipers, nevertheless, were
enthusiastically hailed and eagerly attended by the younger set, and
played no small part in the insinuation of "those St. Ledgers" into the
realms of the anointed.

Thus the winter wore away, and, at all times and in all places Gregory
St. Ledger appeared as the devoted satellite of Ethel Manton, who
entered the social melee without enthusiasm, but with dogged
determination to let the world see that the disappearance of Bill
Carmody affected her not at all.

She tolerated St. Ledger, even encouraged him, for he amused and
offered a welcome diversion for her thoughts.

She was a girl of moods whose imagination carried her into far places
in the picturing of a man--her man--big, and strong, and clean;
fighting bare-fisted among men for his place in the world, and alone
conquering the secret devil of desire that he might claim the right to
her love.

Then it was, curled up in the big armchair in the library, the blue
eyes would glow softly and tenderly in the flare of the flickering
firelight, and between parted lips the warm breath would come and go in
short stabbing whispers to the quick rise and fall of the rounded
bosom, and the little fists would clench white in the tense gladness of
it.

But there were other times--times when the dancing wall-shadows were
dark specters of ill-omen gloating ghoulishly before her horror-widened
eyes as her brain conjured the picture of the man--battered, broken,
helpless, with bloated, sottish features, and bleared eyes--a beaten
man drifting heedlessly, hopelessly, furtive-eyed, away from his
standards--and from her.

At such times the breath would flutter uncertainly between cold,
bloodless lips, and the marble whiteness of her face became a pallid
death mask of despair.

Always in extremes she pictured him, for, knowing the man as she knew
him--the bigness of him--the relentless dynamic man-power of his being,
she knew that with him there would be no half-way measure--no median
line of indifferent achievement which should stand for neither the good
nor the bad among men.

Here was no Tomlinson whose little sins and passive virtues became the
jest of the gods; but a man who in the final accounting would stand
four-square upon the merit of his works, and in the might of their
right or wrong, accept fearlessly his reward.

The days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months--empty months to
the