“Robert,” said the calm, cool voice of his judge, “I thought I married a gentleman.”

Yes, it was coming.  And yet, in the face of it, Robert Walmsley was eagerly regarding a certain branch of the apple tree upon which he used to climb out of that very window.  He believed he could do it now.  He wondered how many blossoms there were on the tree—­ten millions?  But here was some one speaking again: 

“I thought I married a gentleman,” the voice went on, “but—­”

Why had she come and was standing so close by his side?

“But I find that I have married”—­was this Alicia talking?—­“something better—­a man—­Bob, dear, kiss me, won’t you?”

The city was far away.

XI

THE SHOCKS OF DOOM

There is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds who use them for their private apartments.  Vallance felt rather than knew this, but when he stepped down out of his world into chaos his feet brought him directly to Madison Square.

Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl—­of the old order—­young May breathed austerely among the budding trees.  Vallance buttoned his coat, lighted his last cigarette and took his seat upon a bench.  For three minutes he mildly regretted the last hundred of his last thousand that it had cost him when the bicycle cop put an end to his last automobile ride.  Then he felt in every pocket and found not a single penny.  He had given up his apartment that morning.  His furniture had gone toward certain debts.  His clothes, save what were upon him, had descended to his man-servant for back wages.  As he sat there was not in the whole city for him a bed or a broiled lobster or a street-car fare or a carnation for buttonhole unless he should obtain them by sponging on his friends or by false pretenses.  Therefore he had chosen the park.

And all this was because an uncle had disinherited him, and cut down his allowance from liberality to nothing.  And all that was because his nephew had disobeyed him concerning a certain girl, who comes not into this story—­therefore, all readers who brush their hair toward its roots may be warned to read no further.  There was another nephew, of a different branch, who had once been the prospective heir and favorite.  Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in the mire.  Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated and restored.  And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest pit, joining the tattered ghosts in the little park.

Sitting there, he leaned far back on the hard bench and laughed a jet of cigarette smoke up to the lowest tree branches.  The sudden severing of all his life’s ties had brought him a free, thrilling, almost joyous elation.  He felt precisely the sensation of the aeronaut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his balloon drift away.

The hour was nearly ten.  Not many loungers were on the benches.  The park-dweller, though a stubborn fighter against autumnal coolness, is slow to attack the advance line of spring’s chilly cohorts.