"Yes, she did; but I don't know that I ought to tell you. It was really encouraging."
"Well, hurry up."
"She said, 'Miss Margrave has a lot of style; don't you think so?'"
"Is that all?" demanded Raridan, stepping into the car.
"That's all. It wasn't very much; but it was the way she said it; and as she said it she brushed a fly from the horse with the whip, and she did it very carefully."
In the corridor below they met Wheaton coming out of the side door of the bank. He had been at work, he said. Raridan asked him to go with them to the club for a game of billiards, but he pleaded weariness and said he was going to bed.
The three men walked up Varney Street together. Those spirits that order our lives for us must have viewed them with interest as they tramped through the street. They were men of widely different antecedents and qualities. Circumstances, in themselves natural and harmless, had brought them together. The lives of all three were to be influenced by the weakness of one, and one woman's life was to be profoundly affected by contact with all of them. It is not ordained for us to know whether those we touch hands with, and even break bread with, from day to day, are to bring us good or evil. The electric light reveals nothing in the sibyl's book which was not disclosed of old to those who pondered the mysteries by starlight and rushlight.
Wheaton left them at the club door and went on to The Bachelors', which, was only a step farther up the street.
"How do you like Wheaton by this time?" asked Raridan, as they entered the club.
"I hardly know how to answer that," Saxton answered. "He's treated me well enough. It seems to me I'm always trying to find some reason for not liking him, but I can't put my hand on anything tangible."