"I suppose you think I'm crazy, like the rest of them?" he suddenly demanded. I noticed that he had already taken his third drink of wine.
"Why should I think that?"
"I've had enough to make me crazy!" he ejaculated, with that abject self-pity which marks the last milestone on the avenue of hope.
"Perhaps I could help you," I suggested. "Or perhaps I could advise you."
"What good's advice when you're up against what I'm up against?" was his embittered retort.
He was apparently finding relief in the Pommery. I found a compensating relief in merely beholding that look of haunted and abject misery going out of his young eyes.
"Then tell me what the trouble is," I said.
He still shook his head. Then he suddenly looked up.
"How long have you known Harriet Walter?" he asked.
"From the time," I told him, after a moment's thought, "when she first appeared for the Fresh Air Fund at the Plaza. That was about two years ago—when she first went with Frohman."