"Say, dey was a guy useter live down Chicago called Schmidt—Slugger Schmidt, that was a cracker jack—middle-weight—ever hear of him? I knew him, oncet ... he had a little practise bout wid Riley th' other night—you know, Hurrican Riley?—and laid him out in t'ree roun's.... Say, mister, there goes yer car! That's the Poik Street car went!"

"What? Oh, did it? Never mind; I'm going to walk." James was off; off almost before the words were out of his mouth, and Stodger, struck by the sudden curtness of his tone was afraid he had outraged the feelings of the god. Mister Wimboine had clearly been deeply displeased about something, and Stodger was sure it must have been something more than the all-America football team.

Of course Stodger was not really responsible for James' displeasure and his sudden determination to walk the three miles that lay between him and his club and dinner, any more than was the composition of the all-America football team. It was something much more serious; something that made bodily exercise imperative lest cerebration around and around one little particular point should make him dizzy. For it was a very small thing that cerebration was busy on, even if it did represent a great deal to James; only a tiny paragraph at the bottom of the first page of one of the evening papers. The single headline had first caught his eye:—"Rates Heartache at $40,000," and then with unbelieving eyes he read on: "New Haven, Conn., Dec. 8. Myrtle Mowbray, a manicure living in this city, has filed a suit of breach of promise of marriage for $40,000 in the Superior Court here against Harold Wimbourne, a student in Yale University. Mr. Wimbourne is a member of an old and prominent New Haven family. He is a senior in the academic department."

A sort of mental and emotional nausea overcame James as the meaning of those lines sank into his brain. The vulgar, degrading cynicism of the headline! Breach of promise, scandal, newspaper publicity—that was the sort of thing that happened to other people, not to one's self. Such things simply did not occur in families one knew, much less in families by the name of Wimbourne. James had always thought of that name as apart, aloof from such things, exempt from all undesirable publicity. His family pride was none the less strong for being so unconscious, so dormant; now that it was outraged it flamed forth in a scorching blaze.

So loathing gave way to anger, and anger lasted a full mile and a half. It would have lasted longer if it had been concentrated on one person or thing, instead of directed against several persons, several things, several sets of circumstances, the order of things in general. For James was not angry at Harry alone; even he realized that before the mile and a half were up. He was angry at him at first, but that soon passed off somewhat; his anger seemed even to be seeking other objects, unconsciously—the Mowbray woman, Uncle James, himself, Yale University, the whole nature of man.

But cerebration had a chance to get in a good deal of its fell work during those three miles. As he swung open the front door of the club and passed into the main lobby, with its teeming confusion of electric lights and bellboys, he was conscious of nothing but a quiet, deep, corroding disgust that seemed to be as old as all time. It seemed as if he had known of this disgrace for years; had almost had time to outlive it, in fact. His first impulse was to go into the bar and annex himself to one of the cheerful groups that would be congregating there at this hour, and turn his mind to something else. But almost immediately he remembered that practically every one there would also have read the evening paper, and he shuddered at the thought of their pitying glances.

Automatically following his daily custom he cheeked his coat and hat at the cloak room and collected his mail from his post-box. Then he went straight to the one room in the club where he thought he was likely to be alone; a small reading-room usually popular in the afternoon but deserted by early evening. He found it empty, as he had expected. With a sigh of relief he turned out all the electric lights and threw himself on a couch in front of the open wood fire—a graceful though unnecessary compliment on the part of the club management to meteorological conditions.

But unluckily his glance fell on the unopened letters he still held in his hand, and immediately his trouble was on him again. One of them he recognized as coming from his Uncle James and the other, bearing the post-mark of New Haven, was from Beatrice. With a slight groan of combined resignation and disgust he tore open his uncle's letter and read it by the flickering light of the fire.

Dear James:
Your young brother has made more of a mess of it than we hoped would be the case. The Mowbray woman has brought suit for $40,000, and is likely to get it, or a good part of it, according to Raynham, whom I saw about the business yesterday. She has letters and a spoken promise in the presence of witnesses. We have nothing except the knowledge that Harry was drunk when he wrote the letters and drunk when he spoke the words, which is not much comfort. Still, Raynham thinks she can be made to settle out of court, especially if we take our time. We have got to show her first that the world will not come to an end because a Wimbourne has been mixed up with a woman—which it won't. It will be a matter, Raynham thinks, of $15,000 at least; probably more.

"What is going to become of the boy? Have you any influence over him? If not, who has? It is about time somebody exerted some on him, other than bad. He has much to fight against.

Your aunt sends her love. Your affect. uncle,

James Wimbourne.

In spite of his fatigue and his disgust, James smiled as he finished the letter. It was so characteristic of Uncle James; the most conventional sentences, the ones that seemed to mean least, really meant the most. "Your aunt sends her love"; only a person who knew Uncle James could appreciate the consciously suppressed humor of that phrase. As if Aunt Cecilia were not in such a vortex of conflicting emotions over the affair that such a conventional message would not be as far from her as Bagdad! "He has much to fight against"; Harry had much to fight against; Uncle James knew what, and he knew that James also knew. Connotative meanings like these more than atoned for the unflinching frankness of certain other phrases.