She struggled to catch the drift of what he was saying. She was a little pitiful in her humble and futile effort, a little pitiful and invincibly stupid. She decided to speak.

"But it went so well-for five years. And they paid you quite a lot."

"Yes, they did-if the comparison be made with other magazines rather than with the value of my services, but let that pass. We were able to keep going by means of Dancey, the editor. I thought you knew-"

"No."

"When the editor left Harvard, where his themes, though hardly up to standard, were by far the best handed in by anyone of social prominence, he expressed a preference for a literary career. His father fell in with the scheme in the belief that he would lose less money by financing his son's magazine than by employing him."

"What an idea!" "Not at all.

The old gentleman's

analysis of the situation was logical enough to deserve success. Unluckily, Fortune is quite blind in her distributions. The elder Dancey by no means underestimated his son's incompetence. But he did underestimate The Superman's capacity for losing money. He has seen his mistake."

"Is he going to make some changes, then?"

"He is going to make a change more fatal than all other changes combined. He has decided that it will be less expensive to take the editor into the family business-blankets, I believe. In vain we have tried to persuade him that The Superman is entering on a splendid a splendid career of steadily diminishing losses. In vain we have tried to show him that his son's incompetence is even more dangerous than he supposed. The old gentleman is adamant. We shut up shop." "Perhaps be was angry at what you said about his son."

"What?"

"That he was dangerous or something."

Durand peered over his glasses, smiled with heavy benignity, and sighed. "That remark, my dear, was, so to speak, an extra touch thrown off in the heat of fancy. I felt it necessary to complete the burlesque."

"Then you didn't say that to the old gentleman?"

Durand shook his head sadly. "No, my dear, we did not."

"You shouldn't say such things, Wilton. It sounds horrid-telling an old man such dreadful things about his son."

"But, my dear-" He stared helplessly at her placid, anxious face, at her impenetrable expression. He stuck a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and gave a wry grin. "I congratulate you on the impregnability of your moral position."

She flushed and dropped her eyes.

Lying back in his chair, Durand blew rings of smoke and watched her gather up the tea things. He watched her disappear. She was still graceful, and even charming, too, in a way-if one didn't know her mind. Surely in the ten years they had been married she might have learned to know him-him, a man who liked to carry off life's knocks with a dash, a rather engaging dash of epigram. If he had only married a clever woman they would have sat together just now and made their misfortune into a sparkling comedy. But if he had married a clever woman there would have been no misfortune. With his ability and a woman to bring it out he would long before this have put himself above the reach of fate.

Why had he married her? Her grace, her silence, her name, Moira, had snared him. Moira! Was ever such a stupid girl called Moira before? There ought to be a law against giving people such misleading names. One might as well have called him Henry.

Next day he arranged a boutonnière of pansies, took his walking stick and broad felt hat, and went down to his club. He could manage for two months on what he had saved, but it would be

good policy to let it be known in a casual way that he was for the moment out of employment. He was in the living room at five when the members, for the most part writers and editors, began to drift in. To the assemblage he made the demise of The Superman seem very humorous indeed. The late editor, the adamantine father, the staff, all appeared ridiculous. The members were greatly amused, and Durand felt sure of an invitation to dinner and perhaps a good offer afterward. Undoubtedly he was an entertaining talker, one of the few really good conversationalists in America. Even in Paris he could, no doubt, hold his own. At least he could make the symposiarchs admit that we were not all barbarians over here-not quite. These thoughts ran through his head as he discoursed.

"Thus, my friends," he said, waving a hand at the grinning circle, "did the old gentleman's obstinacy triumph over my genius. To-morrow the editor enters the woolen business. The blanket of The blanket of commerce becomes the shroud of art." They laughed. But one by one they drifted out. Alone, at last, he left the club and marched with somewhat faded jauntiness back to his rooms-and Moira. "Ah, mon Dieu!" he said, and twirled his stick abstractedly. They understood him at the club, or at least appreciated him. It is true that to-night they all happened to have engagements; that was mere chance, yet, for a fleet instant he felt that there had been something in his audience at the clubhow should he say it?-not quite satisfying. The moment passed. He straightened his slender, stooped figure and turned down his own street.

It was

crowded with children playing in the late evening light. All down the block a shrill din rose above the restless mass. Every night they spun about the street thus, aimlessly, almost without pleasure, as if unwilling prisoners in the toils of their own quavering agitation.

Durand paused before the yellowterra-cotta entrance to his home. In

the street a small Italian boy, arrayed in a paper hat, was performing by himself a sort of marching dance. It was rather entertaining, and meant to be so, for the boy glanced often at two men who lounged against an iron railing. They grinned with tolerant amusement, then turned to talk of weightier matters.

As Durand mounted the long stairs the thought just brushed him that those two men against the railings smiled a little like the ring of faces at the club; it only brushed him, however, and was gone.

The summer passed and no job came. He first made casual inquiries at the club, then direct approaches. There was nothing. His funds were running low and he resigned. It was a pity that he should have to lose that appreciative circle. Now he began to haunt the offices where work of his sort might be found. Beneath his air, still ironic, he had become almost a petitioner. But at home with Moira he was more than ever acid and obscure. Every evening she asked him with dogged timidity what he had been doing that day.

"Slumming, my dear," he always answered, and waved her away. At last she understood that he meant visiting the editors. She did not dare ask more, and when at times he related the best examples of his wit and their obtuseness she was dazed and could only murmur inarticulately. His bon mots fell flat.

"I am constantly amazed," he said, bitingly, "at the extraordinary heights to which dogged imbecility can carry persons-in all walks of life-from publishing to matrimony."

His words were obscure, but she felt his tone. She managed a wavering smile; her eyes were filling.

"You look so tired, Wilton." Indeed, the veins in his meager hands stood out sharper each day. He had noticed it. Each day his worn, foreign-looking coat weighed on him a little more heavily and left him a little more bowed after his fruitless round. It was a circumstance, however, that he did not care to have noticed. But she went on.

ability impress an editor? At any rate, he promised to let me know in a week.'

"I hope you made him like you, too," she said, a little dubiously. "You can make anyone like you if you want to." She looked at him wistfully.

"My dear, I do not seek affection, even the affection of editors, warmhearted and responsive though they be. I showed him that plainly. I want recognition. I showed him that, too. And I think you will find that he cannot withhold it from me.

His tired face hardened into a supercilious, defiant stare. He felt as though he were facing down the editors of the world- a gallant figure, soon to be triumphant. Moira said nothing, but her timid look of doubt and alarm was equally irritating.

In spite of his confidence the week was rather trying. Moira got on his nerves, always running down to see if it were the postman. At last he said:

"My dear, you seem to imagine our life is in the hands of a single stout and dull editor. For God's sake keep your perspective." She subsided and after that he himself went down to see if it were the postman.

He was far from well, too. Twice, in fact, he was quite vulgarly ill after climbing the stairs. He managed to conceal it from Moira and her dreaded sympathy. She must have suspected, however, for she looked at him with a sort of patient hunger, ghoulishly waiting for a chance to nurse him, no doubt. It was just the sort of thing she would like. Why couldn't she understand that he didn't care what happened to his body if only she could feel the things that went on in his head? But her very look showed how hopeless it was. He burst out at her. "Will you stop looking at me like a spaniel? For God's sake find something to do! Go for a run in the park. That's a good dog," he added, with a short, stabbing laugh.

Strangely enough, she did not wince. "I am going out in an hour."

Her face was grave, she had a certain dignity. She seemed, so to speak, to have folded her wings about her. He felt that he had been brutal. But, after all, she was hopeless.

The next two days were not so trying. She let him alone, which was something. His outburst, while rather ruthless, had at least cleared the air and made it easier for him. He was even able to do some work on a rather entertaining essay. When he got enough of them he would make a book. They would cause something of a stir, he imagined. In a more expansive moment he read her a passage. That, however, was a mistake; she smiled with rather desperate timidity and he grew angry. His muffled rage in turn made him alarmingly tired, so that he had to stop his work. How different it would have been with a woman who understood!

He must have dozed off, for it was evening and Moira was shyly touching his arm. She had a letter-the letter— his heart checked for a breathless instant. It scurried on; he reached out his hand.

"The messenger of fate, eh?" He managed to look at her quizzically and smile. Curiously enough, after all her agitation of the week, she was not excited. It would have been more appropriate if she had saved her fluttering emotions for the climax. He had opened the letter.

His eyes were swimming dizzily, but through the typewritten blur he knew somehow that he was offered the job.

"They seem to want me in spite of my talents."

Unfortunately, there was a catch in his voice which made her feel justified in patting his hand.

Moira Durand saw little of her husband, now that he had become the dramatic critic of the Evening Star. He was a minor notable and consorted with other minor notables at the club, which he had hastened to rejoin as soon as his better fortunes were assured. His essays