“I don’t expect to marry anybody,” Jo had answered.

And that was the truth, lonely though he often was.

The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka.  Any one who got the meaning of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a north-shore suburb, and a house.  Eva’s daughter, Ethel, was growing up, and her mother had an eye on society.

That did away with Jo’s Thursday dinner.  Then Stell’s husband bought a car.  They went out into the country every Sunday.  Stell said it was getting so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway.  Besides, they were unhealthy, old-fashioned things.  They always meant to ask Jo to come along, but by the time their friends were placed, and the lunch, and the boxes, and sweaters, and George’s camera, and everything, there seemed to be no room for a man of Jo’s bulk.  So that eliminated the Sunday dinners.

“Just drop in any time during the week,” Stell said, “for dinner.  Except Wednesday—­that’s our bridge night—­and Saturday.  And, of course, Thursday.  Cook is out that night.  Don’t wait for me to phone.”

And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through the brazen plate-glass window.

And then came the War.  The war that spelled death and destruction to millions.  The war that brought a fortune to Jo Hertz, and transformed him, over night, from a baggy-kneed old bachelor, whose business was a failure, to a prosperous manufacturer whose only trouble was the shortage in hides for the making of his product—­leather!  The armies of Europe called for it.  Harnesses!  More harnesses!  Straps!  Millions of straps.  More!  More!

The musty old harness business over on Lake Street was magically changed from a dust-covered, dead-alive concern to an orderly hive that hummed and glittered with success.  Orders poured in.  Jo Hertz had inside information on the War.  He knew about troops and horses.  He talked with French and English and Italian buyers—­noblemen, many of them—­commissioned by their countries to get American-made supplies.  And now, when he said to Ben or George, “Take f’rinstance your raw hides and leathers,” they listened with respectful attention.

And then began the gay-dog business in the life of Jo Hertz.  He developed into a Loop-hound, ever keen on the scent of fresh pleasure.  That side of Jo Hertz which had been repressed and crushed and ignored began to bloom, unhealthily.  At first he spent money on his rather contemptuous nieces.  He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, and velvet bags.  He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom.  He explained it.