His rides and walks with Beatrice were rare events now because he was so keen on the business of looking for his Colorado protegee.  He gave them up reluctantly.  Every time they went out together into the open Miss Whitford became more discontented with the hothouse existence she was living.  He felt there was just a chance that if he were constant enough, he might sweep her off her feet into that deeper current of life that lay beyond the social shallows.  But he had to sacrifice this chance.  He was not going to let Kitty’s young soul be ship-wrecked if he could help it, and he had an intuition that she was not wise enough nor strong enough to keep off the rocks alone.

A part of his distress lay in the coolness of his imperious young friend who lived on the Drive.  Beatrice resented his divided allegiance, though her own was very much in that condition.  Clay and she had from the first been good comrades.  No man had ever so deeply responded to her need of friendship.  All sorts of things he understood without explanations.  A day with him was one that brought the deep content of happiness.  That, no doubt, she explained to herself, was because he was such a contrast to the men of cramped lives she knew.  He was a splendid tonic, but of course one did not take tonics except occasionally.

Yet though Beatrice intended to remain heart-whole, she wanted to be the one woman in Clay’s life until she released him.  It hurt her vanity, and perhaps something deeper than her vanity, that such a girl as she conceived Kitty Mason to be should have first claim on the time she had come to consider her own.  She made it plain to him, in the wordless way expert young women have at command, that she did not mean to share with him such odd hours as he chose to ask for.  He had to come when she wanted him or not at all.  Without the name of Kitty having been mentioned, he was given to understand that if he wished to remain in the good graces of Beatrice Whitford he must put the cigarette girl out of his mind.

For all his good nature Clay was the last man in the world to accept dictation of this sort.  He would go through with anything he started, and especially where it was a plain call of duty.  Beatrice might like it or not as she pleased.  He would make his own decisions as to his conduct.

He did.

Bee was furious at him.  She told herself that there was either a weak streak in him or a low one, else he would not be so obsessed by the disappearance of this flirtatious little fool who had tried to entrap him.  But she did not believe it.  A glance at this brown-faced man was sufficient evidence that he trod with dynamic force the way of the strong.  A look into his clear eyes was certificate enough of his decency.

When Clay met Kitty at last it was quite by chance.  As it happened Beatrice was present at the time.

He had been giving a box party at the Empire.  The gay little group was gathered under the awning outside the foyer while the limousine that was to take them to Shanley’s for supper was being called.  Colin Whitford, looking out into the rain that pelted down, uttered an exclamatory “By Jove!”