though inadvertently, returned the lightning of his glances, whose rare laughter resembled grace notes, and in whose hair was that almost imperceptible kink, could be virtuous.  This instinctive conviction inflamed him.  For the first time in his life he began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own charms,—­and when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of hell-fire.  He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer with his usual geniality.

“Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?” he was asked one day by Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met on the marble tiles of the hall in their Boston club.

“All right.  Why?”

“Well,” replied Madden, conciliatingly, “you seem kind of preoccupied, that’s all.  I didn’t know but what the fifty-four hour bill the legislature’s just put through might be worrying you.”

“We’ll handle that situation when the time comes,” said Ditmar.  He accepted a gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a little spree over Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would have found enticing.  On another occasion he encountered in the lobby of the Parker House a more intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow, self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of those lawyers hail fellows well met in business circles and looked upon askance by the Brahmins of their profession; more than half politician, he had been in Congress, and from time to time was retained by large business interests because of his persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature—­though these had been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and children’s fifty-four hour bill.  Mr. Sprole’s hair was prematurely white, and the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal worries.

“Hullo, Dit,” he said jovially.

“Hullo, Ches,” said Ditmar.

“Now you’re the very chap I wanted to see.  Where have you been keeping yourself lately?  Come out to the farm to-night,—­same of the boys’ll be there.”  Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm, though he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence.

“I can’t, Ches,” answered Ditmar.  “I’ve got to go back to Hampton.”

This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction.  He took hold of Ditmar’s arm.

“A lady—­eh—­what?”

“I’ve got to go back to Hampton,” repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of truculence that took his friend aback.  Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole have offended the agent of the Chippering Mill.

“I was only joking, Claude,” he hastened to explain.  Ditmar, somewhat mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had gone.

“All alone to-night, Colonel?” asked the coloured head waiter, obsequiously.