The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. He did not
approve of Stewart exactly, not from any dislike of the man, but
from a lack of fineness in the man himself--an intangible thing
that seems to be a matter of that unfashionable essence, the
soul, as against the clay; of the thing contained, by an inverse
metonymy, for the container.

Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, and they
walked to Stewart's apartment together. The frosty air and the
rapid exercise combined to drive away Byrne's irritation; that,
and the recollection that it was Saturday night and that
to-morrow there would be no clinics, no lectures, no operations;
that the great shambles would be closed down and that priests
would read mass to convalescents in the chapels. He was whistling
as he walked along.

Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him,
stopped under a street light to consult his watch.

"Almost ten!" he said. "I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told
Jennie I was going to your pension. She detests Stewart."

"Oh, that's all right. She knows you're playing poker?"

"Yes. She doesn't object to poker. It's the other. You can't make
a good woman understand that sort of thing."

"Thank God for that!"