opportunities. The relations between the two men had always been
friendly, and Dinslow's urgent offers to "take him in on the
ground floor" had of late intensified Glennard's sense of his own
inability to meet good luck half way. Some of the men who had
paused to listen were already in evening clothes, others on their
way home to dress; and Glennard, with an accustomed twinge of
humiliation, said to himself that if he lingered among them it was
in the miserable hope that one of the number might ask him to
dine. Miss Trent had told him that she was to go to the opera
that evening with her rich aunt; and if he should have the luck to
pick up a dinner-invitation he might join her there without extra
outlay.

He moved about the room, lingering here and there in a tentative
affectation of interest; but though the men greeted him pleasantly
no one asked him to dine. Doubtless they were all engaged, these
men who could afford to pay for their dinners, who did not have to
hunt for invitations as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash-
barrel! But no--as Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about
the table an admiring youth called out--"Holly, stop and dine!"

Hollingsworth turned on him the crude countenance that looked like
the wrong side of a more finished face. "Sorry I can't. I'm in
for a beastly banquet."

Glennard threw himself into an arm-chair. Why go home in the rain
to dress? It was folly to take a cab to the opera, it was worse
folly to go there at all. His perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent
were as unfair to the girl as they were unnerving to himself.
Since he couldn't marry her, it was time to stand aside and give a