On the evening of this day, about half-past eight o’clock, he emerged from his mother’s house, light overcoat over his arm in deference to his evening clothes, and started briskly down the street.  On the second block, as luck had it, he overtook Tommy Semple walking the same way.

“Gardiner,” said Semple, “when are you going to get over all this uplift rot and come back to Semple and West?”

The question fell in so marvelously with West’s mood of acute discontent with all that his life had been for the past two years, that it looked to him strangely like Providence.  The easy ways of commerce appeared vastly alluring to him; his income, to say truth, had suffered sadly in the cause of the public; never had the snug dollars drawn him so strongly.  He gave a slow, curious laugh.

“Why, hang it, Tommy!  I don’t know but I’m ready to listen to your siren spiel—­now!”

In the darkness Semple’s eyes gleamed.  His receipts had never been so good since West left him.

“That’s the talk!  I need you in my business, old boy.  By the bye, you can come in at bully advantage if you can move right away.  I’m going to come talk with you to-morrow.”

“Right’s the word,” said West.

At the end of that block a large house stood in a lawn, half hidden from the street by a curtain of trees.  From its concealed veranda came a ripple of faint, slow laughter, advertising the presence of charming society.  West halted.

“Here’s a nice house, Tommy; I think I’ll look in.  See you to-morrow.”

Semple, walking on, glanced back to see what house it was.  It proved to be the brownstone palace leased for three years by old Mr. Avery, formerly of Mauch Chunk but now of Ours.

Sharlee, too, retired from her painful interview with West with a sense of irreparable loss.  Her idol of so many years had, at a word, toppled off into the dust, and not all the king’s horses could ever get him back again.  It was like a death to her, and in most ways worse than a death.

She lay awake a long time that night, thinking of the two men who, for she could not say how long, had equally shared first place in her thoughts.  And gradually she read them both anew by the blaze lit by one small incident.

She could not believe that West was deliberately false; she was certain that he was not deliberately false.  But she saw now, as by a sudden searchlight flung upon him, that her one-time paladin had a fatal weakness.  He could not be honest with himself.  He could believe anything that he wanted to believe.  He could hypnotize himself at will by the enchanting music of his own imaginings.  He had pretty graces and he told himself they were large, fine abilities; dim emotions and he thought they were ideals; vague gropings of ambition, and when he had waved the hands of his fancy over them, presto, they had become great dominating purposes.  He had fluttered fitfully