can Gentleman_, and showed me a page devoted to three photographs:
Mr. and Mrs. Siegmund Stein, lately married in New York City, and Kitty
Ayrshire, operatic soprano, who sang at their house-warming. Mrs. Stein
and I were grinning our best, looked frantic with delight, and Siegmund
frowned inscrutably between us. Poor Peppo wasn't mentioned. Stein has a
publicity sense."

Tevis rose.

"And you have enormous publicity value and no discretion. It was just
like you to fall for such a plot, Kitty. You'd be sure to."

"What's the use of discretion?" She murmured behind her hand. "If the
Steins want to adopt you into their family circle, they'll get you in the
end. That's why I don't feel compassionate about your Ruby. She and I are
in the same boat. We are both the victims of circumstance, and in New
York so many of the circumstances are Steins."

Paul's Case

It was Paul's afternoon to appear before the faculty of the Pittsburgh
High School to account for his various misdemeanours. He had been
suspended a week ago, and his father had called at the Principal's office
and confessed his perplexity about his son. Paul entered the faculty room
suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle out-grown, and the tan
velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn; but for
all that there was something of the dandy about him, and he wore an opal
pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his
button-hole. This latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not
properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban
of suspension.

Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and
a narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable for a certain hysterical
brilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort
of way, peculiarly offensive in a boy. The pupils were abnormally large,
as though he were addicted to belladonna, but there was a glassy glitter
about them which that drug does not produce.

When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there, Paul stated,
politely enough, that he wanted to come back to school. This was a lie,
but Paul was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed, indispensable
for overcoming friction. His teachers were asked to state their
respective charges against him, which they did with such a rancour and
aggrievedness as evinced that this was not a usual case. Disorder and
impertinence were among