game; and Martin, cut to the quick, angry and resisted, would enter
his name. Not again would he put himself in the way of being laughed
at and ridiculed and turned down, teased and tantalized and made a
fool of.

Patience and gentleness--to what end? He loved a will-o'-the-wisp;
he had married a butterfly. Why continue to play the martyr and
follow the fruitless path of rectitude? Hadn't she said, "I can only
live once, and so I shall make life spin whichever way I want it to
go?" He could only live once, and if life was not to spin with her,
let it spin without her. "Who cares?" he said to himself. "Who the
devil cares?" He gave up his coat and hat, and went back into that
room of false joy and syncopation.

It was one o'clock when he stood in the street once more, hot and
wined and careless. "Let's hit it up," he said to Oldershaw as the
car moved away with the sisters and cousins of the other two men. "I
haven't started yet."

The red-haired, roistering Oldershaw, newly injected with the virus
of the Great White Way, clapped him on the back. "Bully for you, old
son," he said. "I'm in the mood to paint the little old town. I left
my car round the corner in charge of a down-at-heel night-bird. Come
on. Let's go and see if he's pinched it."

It was one of those Italian semi-racing cars with a body which gave
it the naked appearance of a muscular Russian dancer dressed in a
skin and a pair of bangles. The night-bird, one of the large army of
city gypsies who hang on to life by the skin of their teeth, was
sitting on the running board with his arms folded across his