better man the chance--and his thought admitted the ironical
implication that in the terms of expediency the phrase might stand
for Hollingsworth.



II


He dined alone and walked home to his rooms in the rain. As he
turned into Fifth Avenue he caught the wet gleam of carriages on
their way to the opera, and he took the first side street, in a
moment of irritation against the petty restrictions that thwarted
every impulse. It was ridiculous to give up the opera, not
because one might possibly be bored there, but because one must
pay for the experiment.

In his sitting-room, the tacit connivance of the inanimate had
centred the lamp-light on a photograph of Alexa Trent, placed, in
the obligatory silver frame, just where, as memory officiously
reminded him, Margaret Aubyn's picture had long throned in its
stead. Miss Trent's features cruelly justified the usurpation.
She had the kind of beauty that comes of a happy accord of face
and spirit. It is not given to many to have the lips and eyes of
their rarest mood, and some women go through life behind a mask
expressing only their anxiety about the butcher's bill or their
inability to see a joke. With Miss Trent, face and mind had the
same high serious contour. She looked like a throned Justice by
some grave Florentine painter; and it seemed to Glennard that her
most salient attribute, or that at least to which her conduct gave