“Hear of him?  I’ve seen him.  I saw him this morning at Mrs. Wayne’s.  He just dropped in while I was there and, metaphorically speaking, dragged us about by the hair of our heads.”

“Some women, I believe, confess to enjoying that sensation,” Vincent observed.

“Yes, it’s exciting,” answered his wife.

“It’s an easy excitement to attain.”

“Oh, one wants it done in good style.”

Something so stimulating that it was almost hostile flashed through the interchange.

Mathilde murmured to Pete: 

“Who are they talking about?”

“A mixture of Alcibiades and Bill Sykes,” said Adelaide, catching the low tone, as she always did.

“He’s the district leader and a very bad influence,” said Mrs. Wayne.

“He’s a champion middle-weight boxer,” said Pete.

“He’s the head of my stevedores,” said Farron.

“O Mr. Farron,” Mrs. Wayne exclaimed, “I do wish you would use your influence over him.”

“My influence?  It consists of paying him eighty-five dollars a month and giving him a box of cigars at Christmas.”

“Don’t you think you could tone him down?” pleaded Mrs. Wayne.  “He does so much harm.”

“But I don’t want him toned down.  His value to me is his being just as he is.  He’s a myth, a hero, a power on the water-front, and I employ him.”

“You employ him, but do you control him?” asked Adelaide, languidly, and yet with a certain emphasis.

Her husband glanced at her.

“What is it you want, Adelaide?” he said.

She gave a little laugh.

“Oh, I want nothing.  It’s Mrs. Wayne who wants you to do something—­rather difficult, too, I should imagine.”

He turned gravely to their guest.

“What is it you want, Mrs. Wayne?”

Mrs. Wayne considered an instant, and as she was about to find words for her request her son spoke: 

“She’ll tell you after dinner.”

“Pete, I wasn’t going to tell the story,” his mother put in protestingly.  “You really do me injustice at times.”

Adelaide, remembering the conversation of the morning, wondered whether he did.  She felt grateful to him for wishing to spare Mathilde the hearing of such a story, and she turned to him with a caressing graciousness in which she was extremely at her ease.  Mathilde, recognizing that her mother was pleased, though not being very clear why, could not resist joining in their conversation; and Mrs. Wayne was thus given an opportunity of murmuring the unfortunate Anita’s story into Vincent’s ear.

Adelaide, holding Pete with a flattering gaze, seeming to drink in every word he was saying, heard Mrs. Wayne finish and heard Vincent say: 

“And you think you can get it annulled if only Burke doesn’t interfere?”

“Yes, if he doesn’t get hold of the boy and tell him that his dignity as a man is involved.”