"Everybody is decent enough to her as far as I know."

"Including yourself?"

"Certainly, including myself," retorted Quair, adding naively:
"Besides, I knew any attempt at philandering would be time wasted."

"Yet you tried it," mused Guilder, entering his big touring car and
depositing a bundle of blue-prints and linen tracing paper at his
own ponderous feet. Quair followed him and spoke briefly to the
chauffeur, then:

"Tried nothing," he said. "A little chaff, that's all. When it
comes to a man like Jack Graylock going so far as to ask her to
marry him, good night, nurse! Nothing doing, even for me."

"Even for you," repeated Guilder in his moderate and always
modulated voice. "Well, if she's escaped you and Graylock, she's
beyond any danger from Drene, I fancy."

Quair smiled appreciatively, as though a delicate compliment had
been offered him. Several times on the way to call on Graylock he
insisted on stopping the car at as many celebrated cafes. Guilder
patiently awaited him in the car and each time Quair emerged from
the cafe bar a little more flushed and a trifle jauntier than when
he had entered.

He was a man so perfectly attired and so scrupulously fastidious
about his person that Guilder often speculated as to just why Quair