reat fat
hand, just the least in the world, and when through some gossip that his
wife brought him from the kitchen he felt the scorn of an old friend
burn his soul like a caustic, for many days he would brood over it.
Finally care began to chisel down his flinty face, to cut the fat from
his bull neck, so that the cords stood out, and, through staring in
impotent rage and pain at the ceiling in the darkness of the night, red
rims began to worm around his eyes. He was not sixty years old then,
and he had lashed himself into seventy.

However his money-cunning did not grow dull. He kept his golden touch
and his impotent dollars piled higher and higher. The pile must have
mocked Isabel Markley, for it could bring her nothing that she wanted.
She stopped trying to give big parties and receptions. Her social
efforts tapered down to little dinners for the new people in town. But
as the dinner hour grew near she raged--so the servants said--whenever
the telephone rang, and in the end she had to give up even the dinner
scheme.

[Illustration: As the dinner hour grew near she raged--so the servants
said--whenever the telephone rang]

So there came a time when they began to take trips to the seashore and
the mountains, flitting from hotel to hotel. In the office we knew when
they changed quarters, for at each resort John Markley would see the
reporters and give out a long interview, which was generally prefaced by
the statement that he was a prominent Western capitalist, who had
refused the nomination for Governor or for Senator, or for whatever
Isabel Markley happened to think of; and papers containing these
interviews, marked in green ink, came addressed to the office in her
stylish, angular hand. During grand opera season one might see the
Markleys hanging about the great hotels of Chicago or Kansas City, he a
tired, sleepy-faced, prematurely old man, who seemed to be counting the
hours till bed-time, and she a tailored, rather overfed figure, with a
freshly varnished face and unhealthy, bright, bold eyes, walking
slightly ahead of her shambling companion, looking nervously about her
in search of some indefinite thing that was gone from her life.

One day John Markley shuffled into our office, bedizened as usual, and
fumbled in his pocket for several minutes before he could find the copy
of the _Mexican Herald_ containing the news of his boy's death in Vera
Cruz. He had passed the time of life for tears, yet when he asked