Seldom did Blair Maynard ever trust himself any more in the presence of his mother’s guests.  Since Mrs. Maynard had announced the engagement of his sister Margaret to Richard Swann, she had changed remarkably.  Blair did not love her any the better for the change.  All his life, as long as he could remember, he and Margaret had hated pretension, and the littleness of living beyond their means.  But now, with this one coup d’etat, his mother had regained her position as the leader of Middleville society.  Haughty, proud, forever absorbed in the material side of everything, she moved in a self-created atmosphere Blair could not abide.  He went hungry many a time rather than sit at table with guests such as Mrs. Maynard delighted to honor.

Blair and Margaret had become estranged, and Blair spent most of his time alone, reading or dreaming, but mostly sleeping.  He knew he grew weaker every day and his weakness appeared to induce slumber.

On New Year’s day, after dinner, he fell asleep in a big chair, across the hall from the drawing-room.  And when he awoke the drawing-room was full of people making New Year’s calls.  If there was anything Blair hated it was to thump on his crutch past curious, cold-eyed persons.  So he remained where he was, hoping not to be seen.  But unfortunately for him, he had exceedingly keen ears and exceedingly sensitive feelings.

Some of the guests he knew very well without having to see them.  The Swanns, and Fanchon Smith, with her brother and mother, Gerald Hartley and his bride, Helen Wrapp, and a number of others prominent as Middleville’s elect were recognizable by their voices.  While he was sitting there, trying not to hear what he could not help hearing, a number more arrived.

They talked.  It gradually dawned on Blair that some gossip was rife anent a midnight marriage between his friend Daren Lane and Mel Iden.  Blair was deeply shocked.  Then his emotions, never calm, grew poignant.  He listened.  What he heard spoken of Daren and Mel made his blood boil.  Sweet voices, low-pitched, well-modulated, with the intonation of culture, made witty and scarcely veiled remarks of a suggestiveness that gave rise to laughter.  Voices of men, bland, blase, deriding Daren Lane!  Blair listened, and slowly his passion mounted to a white heat.  And then it seemed, fate fully, in a lull of the conversation, some one remarked graciously to Mrs. Maynard that it was a pity that Blair had lost a leg in the war.

Blair thumped up on his crutch, and thumped across the hall to confront this assembly.

“Ladies and gentlemen, pray pardon me,” he said, in his high-pitched tenor, cold now, and under perfect control.  “I could not help hearing your conversation.  And I cannot help illuminating your minds.  It seems exceedingly strange to me that people of intelligence should make the blunders they do.  So strange that in the future I intend to take such as you have made as nothing