indifferent man he knows. He says you don't care two minutes whether a
girl lives or dies. Isn't he a mean ole wicked sing, p'eshus Flopit!"

The reply was inaudible, and Mr. Baxter passed on, having recognized
nothing of his own.

"These YOUNG fellows don't have any trouble finding their dress-suits, I
guess," he murmured. "Not on a night like this!"


... Thus William, after a hard day, came to the gates of his romance,
entering those portals of the moon in triumph. At one stroke his dashing
raiment gave him high superiority over Johnnie Watson and other rivals
who might loom. But if he had known to what undoing this great coup
exposed him, it is probable that Mr. Baxter would have appeared at the
Emerson Club, that night, in evening clothes.




VIII

JANE

William's period of peculiar sensitiveness dated from that evening, and
Jane, in particular, caused him a great deal of anxiety. In fact, he
began to feel that Jane was a mortification which his parents might have
spared him, with no loss to themselves or to the world. Not having
shown that consideration for anybody, they might at least have been less
spinelessly indulgent of her. William's bitter conviction was that he