It is not easy in this world to take any definite step without annoying
somebody, and Kirk, in embarking on his wooing of Ruth Bannister,
failed signally to do so. Lora Delane Porter beamed graciously upon
him, like a pleased Providence, but the rest of his circle of
acquaintances were ill at ease.

The statement does not include Hank Jardine, for Hank was out of New
York; but the others--Shanklyn, the actor; Wren, the newspaper-man;
Bryce, Johnson, Willis, Appleton, and the rest--sensed impending change
in the air, and were uneasy, like cattle before a thunder-storm. The
fact that the visits of Mrs. Porter and Ruth to inquire after George,
now of daily occurrence, took place in the afternoon, while they,
Kirk's dependents, seldom or never appeared in the studio till drawn
there by the scent of the evening meal, it being understood that during
the daytime Kirk liked to work undisturbed, kept them ignorant of the
new development.

All they knew was that during the last two weeks a subtle change had
taken place in Kirk. He was less genial, more prone to irritability
than of old. He had developed fits of absent-mindedness, and was
frequently to be found staring pensively at nothing. To slap him on the
back at such moments, as Wren ventured to do on one occasion, Wren
belonging to the jovial school of thought which holds that nature gave
us hands in order to slap backs, was to bring forth a new and
unexpected Kirk, a Kirk who scowled and snarled and was hardly to be
appeased with apology. Stranger still, this new Kirk could be summoned
into existence by precisely the type of story at which, but a few weeks
back, he would have been the first to laugh.