year, listening for the roll of wheels and the click of a night-key.

II

Everybody liked John Corlear Delancy, and this in spite of himself, for
no one ever knew him to make any effort to incur either love or hate.
The handsome boy was a favorite without lifting his eyebrows, and he
sauntered through the university, picking his easy way along an elective
course, winning the affectionate regard of every one with whom he came
in contact. And this was not because he lacked quality, or was merely
easy-going and negative or effeminate, for the same thing happened to
him when he went shooting in the summer in the Rockies. The cowboys and
the severe moralists of the plains, whose sedate business in life is to
get the drop on offensive persons, regarded him as a brother. It isn't
a bad test of personal quality, this power to win the loyalty of men who
have few or none of the conventional virtues. These non-moral enforcers
of justice--as they understood it liked Jack exactly as his friends in
the New York clubs liked him--and perhaps the moral standard of approval
of the one was as good as the other.

Jack was a very good shot and a fair rider, and in the climate of
England he might have taken first-rate rank in athletics. But he had
never taken first-rate rank in anything, except good-fellowship. He had
a great many expensive tastes, which he could not afford to indulge,
except in imagination. The luxury of a racing-stable, or a yacht, or a
library of scarce books bound by Paris craftsmen was denied him. Those
who account for failures in life by a man's circumstances, and not by
a lack in the man himself, which is always the secret of failure, said
that Jack was unfortunate in coming into a certain income of twenty
thousand a year. This was just enough to paralyze effort, and not enough
to permit a man to expand in any direction. It is true that he was
related to millions and moved in a millionaire atmosphere, but these
millions might never flow into his bank account. They were not in hand
to use, and they also helped to paralyze effort--like black clouds of
an impending shower that may pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher
indoors.

The best thing that Jack Delancy ever did, for himself, was to marry
Edith Fletcher. The wedding, which took place some eight months before
the advent of the Spanish dancer, was a surprise to many, for the
girl had even less fortune than Jack, and though in and of his society
enti