chest, and, suddenly remembering the directions of his physician, he
fastened his overcoat more closely and hastened across the street,
passing rapidly in and out among the moving vehicles until he gained,
over the sloppy crossing, the safety of the opposite sidewalk. Here he
turned in the direction of Madison Avenue and finally, drawing out his
latchkey, entered one of the dingy, flat-faced, utterly conventional
brown houses which make up so large a part of the characterless
complexion of New York life.

The interior was brilliantly lighted, and he was shrinking noiselessly
into his study at the back when he heard his name called from the
drawing-room threshold and saw his wife standing there while she put on
a long white evening cloak over a filmy effect of cream-coloured lace.
She was a small, pretty woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificially
blonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year ago
she had resembled, if one might imagine the existence of such a being, a
perfectly worldly wise and cynically minded baby, but twelve months of
late suppers and many plays had already blighted her rose-leaf skin and
sown three fine, nervous little wrinkles between her delicately arched
eyebrows. She was very vivacious, but, as Gerty Bridewell had observed,
it was a vivacity that was hardly justified, since possessing neither
the means nor the manner exacted by the more exclusive circles, she had
been compelled to compromise with a social body which made up in members
what it lacked as an organism. Her dash and her prettiness sufficed to
place her comfortably here, but beyond a speaking acquaintance with
Gerty, who confessed that she was too charitable to be exclusive she had
not as yet approached that small shining sphere whose inmates boast the
larger freedom no less than the finer discrimination. The larger
freedom, it seemed at times, was all of it that she was ever to attain,
for, venturing a little too boldly once or twice with a light head, she