healthy self-conceit, age twenty-nine. Services at noon; friends
and relatives only."

"Oho! You've heard the seductive song of the Rhine maiden?" Pope's
eyes were twinkling.

"Eh?--I'm tangled up like a basket of ticker-tape. You see,
Campbell, I drink; candor compels me to acknowledge that much. In
a moment of folly I was indiscreet, and ever since I have been
trying to apologize. I have borne garlands of roses, offers of
devotion, plaintive invitations to dine, but--the Circuit is a
trick theater and it has a thousand doors. All I have to show for
my efforts at reparation is a bad cold, a worse temper, and a set
of false teeth which the doorman pledged with me for a loan of ten
dollars. I have Mr. Regan's dental frieze in my bureau-drawer--but
they only grin at me in derision. In short, I'm in Dutch, and
there sits the adorable cause of my sorrows."

In spite of Wharton's reproachful tone, the gaze he bent upon
Lorelei was good-humored, and she saw that he was in a mood
different to any she had ever seen him in. Strange to say, he was
sober, or nearly so, and he was plainly determined to make her
like him.

"Has he annoyed you, Miss Knight?" asked Pope.

"Dreadfully."

Wharton explained further. "The first time we met I deserved to be
slapped, and I was. You see, I was ruder than usual. But I have