McQuade drove on, and Warrington resumed his interrupted study of the sidewalk.  McQuade thought nothing more about the fellow who wrote plays, and the dramatist had no place in his mind for the petty affairs of the politician.  Fate, however, moves quite as certainly and mysteriously as the cosmic law.  The bitter feud between these two men began with their dogs.

At the club Warrington found a few lonely bachelors, who welcomed him to the long table in the grill-room; but he was in no mood for gossip and whisky.  He ordered a lithia, drank it quickly, and escaped to the reading-room to write some letters.

Down in the grill-room they talked him over.

“I don’t know whether he boozes now, but he used to be tanked quite regularly,” said one.

“Yes, and they say he writes best when half-seas over.”

“Evidently,” said a third, “he doesn’t drink unless he wants to; and that’s more than most of us can say.”

“Pshaw!  Sunday’s clearing-up day; nobody drinks much on Sunday.  I wonder that Warrington didn’t marry Challoner himself.  He went around with her a lot.”

Everybody shrugged.  You can shrug away a reputation a deal more safely than you can talk it.

“Oh, Bennington’s no ass.  She’s a woman of brains, anyhow.  It’s something better than marrying a little fool of a pretty chorus girl.  She’ll probably make things lively for one iron-monger.  If the hair doesn’t fly, the money will.  He’s a good sort of chap, but he wants a snaffle and a curb on his high-stepper.”

Then the topic changed to poker and the marvelous hands held the night before.

Warrington finished his correspondence, dined alone, and at seven-thirty started up the street to the Benningtons’.  Jove, with the assurance of one who knows he will be welcomed, approached the inviting veranda at a gallop.  His master, however, followed with a sense of diffidence.  He noted that there was a party of young people on the veranda.  He knew the severe and critical eye of youth, and he was a bit afraid of himself.  Evidently Miss Patty had no lack of beaux.  Miss Patty in person appeared at the top of the steps, and smiled.

“I was half expecting you,” she said, offering a slim cool hand.

Warrington clasped it in his own and gave it a friendly pressure.

“Thank you,” he replied.  “Please don’t disturb yourselves,” he remonstrated, as the young men rose reluctantly from their chairs.  “Is Mrs. Bennington at home?”

“You will find her in the library.”  Then Patty introduced him.  There was some constraint on the part of the young men.  They agreed that, should the celebrity remain, he would become the center of attraction at once, and all the bright things they had brought for the dazzlement of Patty would have to pass unsaid.

To youth, every new-corner is a possible rival; he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t believe that each man who comes along is simply bound to fall in love with the very girl he has his eyes on.