But the girl did not answer, did not stir.  “You won’t hurt him!” she repeated.  “Say you won’t!”

A moment longer Ben Blair held her; then his hands dropped and he turned toward the vestibule.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t know.”

CHAPTER XXII

TWO FRIENDS HAVE IT OUT

Clarence Sidwell was alone in his down-town bachelor quarters; that is, alone save for an individual the club-man’s friends termed his “Man Friday,” an undersized and very black negro named Alexander Hamilton Brown, but answering to the contraction “Alec.”  Valet, man of all work, steward, Alec was as much a fixture about the place as the floor or the ceiling; and, like them, his presence, save as a convenience, was ignored.

The rooms themselves were on the eleventh floor of a down-town office-building, as near the roof as it had been possible for him to secure suitable quarters.  For eight years Sidwell had made them his home when he was in town.  The circle of his friends had commented, his mother and sisters (his father had been long dead) had protested, when, a much younger man, he first severed himself from the semi-colonial mansion which for three generations had borne the name of Sidwell; but as usual, he had had his own way.

“I want to work when I feel so inclined, when the mood is on me, whether it’s two o’clock of the afternoon or of the morning,’” he had explained; “and I can’t do it without interruption here with you and your friends.”

For the same reason he had chosen to live near the sky.  There, high above the noise and confusion, he could observe and catch the influence of the activity which is in itself a powerful stimulant, without experiencing its unpleasantness.  Essentially, the man was an aesthete.  If he went to a race or a football game he wished to view it at a distance.  To be close by, to mingle in the dust of action, to smell the sweat of conflict, to listen to the low-voiced imprecations of the defeated, detracted from his pleasure.  He could not prevent these features—­therefore he avoided them.

This particular evening he was doing nothing, which was very unusual for him.  The necessity for society, or for activity, physical or mental, had long ago become as much a part of his nature as the desire for food.  Dilettante musician as well as artist, when alone at this time of the evening he was generally at the upright piano in the corner.  Even Alec noticed the unusual lack of occupation on this occasion, and exposed the key-board suggestively; but, observing the action, Sidwell only smiled.

“Think I ought to, Alec?” he queried.

The negro rolled his eyes.  Despite his long service, he had never quite lost his awe of the man he attended.

“Sho, yo always do that, or something, sah,” he said.