s,
and the seats around the sides, the great mirrors and the golden
curtains, which fluttered in summer and remained austerely in place in
winter, made a little heaven for us all, and life one long cry of joy.
Here women, like strange flowers that bloomed only at night, smiled and
laughed the hours away; and the low whirr of Broadway drifted in, while
the faint thunder of Fifth Avenue lent an added mystery to the place, as
though the troubled world were shut out but could be reached again in an
instant, if you wished to reach it.

Shelby liked to be seen in such places. He said he felt that he was on
the Continent, and he liked to get nervously excited over a liqueur and
a mazagan of coffee, and then flee to his cozy lodgings in Gramercy Park
and produce page after page of closely written manuscript.

The pictures of Marguerite Davis remained a part of the furnishings of
those rooms of his--that we heard; and I knew it directly shortly after
this. For I, too, left the newspaper, and went into the magazine-editing
game. I found a berth on that same popular periodical to which Shelby
was then contributing his matchless stories; and part of my job was to
see him frequently, take him to luncheon or dinner, talk over his future
plans with him, discuss the possibility of his doing a novelette which
later he could expand into a full-sized volume and thereby gain an added
vogue.

It was during this period that I came to know him so well--came to know
him, that is, as intimately as he wished to be known. Always there was a
cloak of reserve which he put on with me, as with every one. I tried to
broaden his horizon, to have him meet other men--and women. He would go
with me once or twice to some party, for he was clever enough to see
that he must not offend me, just as he knew that I must not offend him.
We were too valuable to each other, and in that odd mixing up of our
affairs in this world here we were, after so brief an interval, in the
relationship of editor and contributor.

He knew, however, that I had always admired his literary gifts; but I
confess that the feet of clay began to creep into view when he told me,
one night at the Martin, that his favorite novelist of all time
was--Marion Crawford! That explained so much to me that I had not
understood before. I smiled tolerantly, for my own taste ran much
higher; and I seemed from then on to sense a certain cheapness in
Shelby's mind, as if I had lifted the cloth over