Through the tangle of her love affairs Wilmot Allen threaded a path of hope, despair, and cynicism.  There were times when she seemed to have a return of her childhood infatuation for him; there were times when he feared that in one of her moments of impressionable enthusiasm she would marry some other man in haste, and repent at leisure.  And there were the cynical intervals, when it seemed to him that he could do without her, and that nothing was worth while but enjoyment, both base and innocent, and pleasure.

During Wilmot’s junior year at New Haven, his father’s sensational, dissipated, and stock-gambling career came to a sudden end.  There was even a shadow on the name.  He had done something really discreditable, something of course to do with money; since a man who is merely a gambler, a drunkard, and a Don Juan may with ease keep upon good terms with society.

Wilmot Allen failed, at least without honor, filled himself full of brandy, cocked a forty-five-calibre revolver, put the muzzle in his mouth, pulled the trigger, blew off the back of his head, and was “accidentally shot while cleaning the weapon.”

The real tragedy was that so good a career as the son’s should have come to so untimely an end in so good a collegiate world as Yale.  He stood well in his class, he had played right tackle for two seasons and was heir apparent to the captaincy; he was well beloved and would have received an election to a senior society in the spring.  But the solid ground being withdrawn from under his feet—­in other words, his allowance from his father—­he left amid universal regret, and found himself a very small person in a very great city; worse, a youth who had always had everything, loved pleasure, lights, games, and color, and who now had no visible means of support.

[Illustration:  She wished that she might die, or, infinitely better, that she had never been born.]

Friends found him a position in Wall Street.  Being young, attractive, a good “mixer,” not in the least shy, he was given a handsome “entertaining” allowance and told to bring in business.  So he foregathered with out-of-town magnates, made the city a pleasant, familiar place to them, and brought much of their money into the firm’s office.  When Barbara was kind he despised his anomalous position and strove to free himself from it; but even the best man has to live.

And during those intervals when he thought he could do without her, Wilmot sank deeper and deeper into methods of self-advancement which, if not actually base and culpable, at least smirched the finer qualities of his nature, and hardened his heart.