Sidwell smiled again; but it was not a pleasant smile.  So this was the way of it!  Even his servant had observed his habitual restlessness, and had doubtless commented upon it to his companions in the way servants have of passing judgment upon their employers.  And if Alec had noticed this, then how much more probable it was that others of Sidwell’s numerous acquaintances had noticed it also!  He winced at the thought.  That this was his skeleton, and that he had endeavored to keep it hidden, Sidwell did not attempt to deny to himself.  One of the reasons he had not given to his family for establishing these down-town quarters was this very one.  Time and again, when he had felt the mood of protest strong upon him, he had come here and locked the doors to fight it out alone.  But after all, it had been useless.  The fact had been obvious, despite the trick; mayhap even more so on account of it.  Like the Wandering Jew he was doomed, followed by a relentless curse.

He shook himself, and walking over to the sideboard poured out a glass of Cognac and drank it as though it were wine.  Sidwell did not often drink spirits.  Experience had taught him that to begin usually meant to end with regret the following day; but to-night, with his present mood upon him, the action was as instinctive as breathing.  He moved back to his chair by the window.

The evening was hot, on the street depressingly so, but up here after the sun was set there was always a breeze, and it was cool and comfortable.  The man looked out over the sooty, gravelled roofs of the surrounding lower buildings, and down on the street, congested with its flowing stream of cars, equipages, and pedestrians.  Times without number he had viewed the currents and counter-currents of that scene, but never before had he so caught its vital spirit and meaning.  Born of the elect,—­reared and educated among them,—­the supercilious superiority of his class was as much a part of him as his name.  While he realized that physically the high and the low were constructed on practically the same plan, he had been wont to consider them as on totally separate mental planes.  That the clerk and the roustabout on ten dollars a week, breathing the same atmosphere,—­seeing daily, hourly, minute by minute, from separate viewpoints, the same life,—­that they should have in common the constant need of diversion had never before occurred to him.  Multitudes of times, as a sociologist, or as a literary man in search of realism, he had visited the haunts of the under-man.  Languidly, critically, as he would have observed at the “zoo” an animal with whose habits he was unacquainted, he had watched this rather curious under-man in his foolish, or worse than foolish, endeavor to find amusement or oblivion.  He had often been interested, as by a clown at a circus; but more frequently the sight had merely inspired disgust, and he had returned to his own diversions, his own efforts to secure the same