nt when his slim volume
had placed him in the category of the gloriously misunderstood. Because
such reviewers as had noticed his book wrote of his "poetry" using
inverted commas to advertise their scorn, and because nobody bought the
volume despite its slimness, he became the idol of men and women who also
wrote that which nobody read, and in consequence developed souls with the
celerity that a small boy develops stomachache.

For nothing in the wide world was more certain to the gloriously
misunderstood than this: the test of excellence is scorn. Thornton Lyne
might in different circumstances have drifted upward to sets even more
misunderstood--yea, even to a set superior to marriage and soap and clean
shirts and fresh air--only his father died of a surfeit, and Thornton
became the Lyne of Lyne's Serve First.

His first inclination was to sell the property and retire to a villa in
Florence or Capri. Then the absurdity, the rich humour of an idea, struck
him. He, a scholar, a gentleman and a misunderstood poet, sitting in the
office of a store, appealed to him. Somebody remarked in his hearing that
the idea was "rich." He saw himself in "character" and the part appealed
to him. To everybody's surprise he took up his father's work, which meant
that he signed cheques, collected profits and left the management to the
Soults and the Neys whom old Napoleon Lyne had relied upon in the
foundation of his empire.

Thornton wrote an address to his 3,000 employees--which address was
printed on decided antique paper in queerly ornate type with wide
margins. He quoted Seneca, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius and the "Iliad."
The "address" secured better and longer reviews in the newspapers than
had his book.

He had found life a pleasant experience--all the more piquant because of
the amazement of innumerable ecstatic friends who clasped their hands
and asked awefully: "How _can_ you--a man of your temperament...!"

Life might have gone on being pleasant if every man and woman he had met
had let him have his own way. Only there were at least two people with
whom Thornton Lyne's millions carried no weight.

It was warm in his limousine, which was electrically heated. But outside,
on that raw April morning, it was bitterly cold, and the shivering little
group of women who stood at a respectful distance from the prison gates,
drew their shawls tightly about them as errant flakes of snow whirled
across the open. The common was covered