His afternoon recreation, there being no baseball, was to lead Nap triumphantly through Central Park to be seen of an envious throng.  He affected a lordly unconsciousness of the homage Nap received.  He left adoring women in his wake and covetous men; and children demanded bluntly if he would sell that dog; or if he wouldn’t sell him would he give him away, because they wanted him.

Surfeited with this easily won attention, he sat by the driveway to watch the endless parade of carriage folk.  His eye was for the women in those shining equipages.  Young or old, they were to him newly exciting.  His attitude was the rather scornful one of a conqueror whose victories have cost him too little.  They had been mysteries to him, but now, all in a day, he understood women.  They were vulnerable things, and men were their masters.  Votes, indeed!

His own power over them was abundantly proved.  Any of them passing heedlessly there would, under the right conditions, confess it.  Let him be called to their notice and they’d be following him around, forgetting plighted vows, getting him into places screened with vines and letting themselves be led on; telephoning him to give them and Grandma tea and things of a Sunday in some nice place—­hanging on his words.  Of course it had always been that way, only he had never known it.  Looking back over his barren past he surveyed minor incidents with new eyes.  There was that girl with the pretty hair in the business college, who always smiled in the quick, confidential way at him.  Maybe she wouldn’t have been a talker!

And how far was this present affair going?  Pretty far already:  clandestine meetings and that sort of thing.  Still, he couldn’t help being a man, could he?  And Tommy Hollins, poor dupe!

In the steam-heated apartment It had been locked in a closet, which in an upright position It fitted nicely.  He did not open the door that night.  He felt that he was venturing into ways that the wise and good king would not approve.  He could not face the thing while guilt was in his heart.  A woman had come between them.

* * * * *

At three o’clock the next afternoon he lounged carelessly against the basement railing of the steam-heated apartment.  With Nap on a leash he was keenly aware that he was “some class.”  He was arrayed in the new suit of a quiet check.  The cravat with the red stripe shimmered in the sunlight.  He had a new straw hat with a coloured band, bought the day before at a shop advertising “Snappy Togs for Dressy Men.”  He lightly twirled a yellow stick and carried yellow gloves in one hand.  He was almost the advanced dresser, dignified but unquestionably a bit different.  He seemed to be one who has tamed the world to his ends; but, though he stood erect, expanded his chest and drew in his waist, as instinctively do all those who wear America’s greatest eighteen-dollar suit, he was nevertheless wondering with a lively apprehension just what was going to be done with him.  This life of “affairs” was making him uncomfortable.