tally on what came in; it was sufficient to know that there
was always plenty to take out. Besides, it had been an understanding
from the first that Archie was to do the drudgery. Len liked this,
because it left him free--free for summers in Europe and winters in
Egypt or at Palm Beach.

By degrees reminiscence tended toward somnolence. And yet it couldn't be
said that Len slept. He kept sufficiently awake to put out his hand from
time to time and seize the tumbler. He could even brew himself another
glass. If a brother clubman strolled near enough to say, "Hello, Len!"
or, "Hello, Willoughby!" he could respond with a dull, "Hello, Tom!" or,
"Hello, Jones!" But he spoke as out of a depth; he spoke with some of
that weariness at being called back to life which Rembrandt depicts on
the face of Lazarus rising from the tomb. It was delicious to sink away
from the prosaic and the boresome, to be so fully awake that he could
follow the movement in the street and the hopping of the sparrows in the
trees, and yet be, as it were, removed, enchanted, seeing and hearing
and thinking and even drinking through the medium of a soothing,
slumbrous spell.

It could hardly ever be said that he went beyond this point. Though
there were occasions on which he miscalculated his effects, they could
generally be explained as accidental. Above all, they didn't rise from
an appetite for drink. The phrase was one he was fond of; he often used
it in condemning a vice of which he disapproved. He used it on this
particular afternoon, when Thor Masterman, who had come to drive him
homeward in his runabout, was sitting in the opposite arm-chair, waiting
to make the start.

"There's one thing about me, Thor--never had an appetite for drink. Not
to say _drink_. Thing I despise. Your father's all wrong about me. Don't
know what's got into him. Thinks I take too much. Rot! That's what it
is--bally rot! _You_ know that, Thor, don't you? Appetite for drink
something I despise."

Thor considered the moment one to be made use of. "Has father been
saying anything about it?"

"No; but he looks it. Suppose I don't know what he means? Sees double,
your father does. Anybody'd think, from the way he treats me, that I was
a disgrace to the firm. I'd like to know what that firm'd be without
me."

Thor tried to frame his next question discreetly. "I hope there's been
no suggestion of the firm's doing without you, Mr. Willoughby?"

To this Len gave but an in