“Mr. Glenarm, you are what I have heard called a quitter, defined in common Americanese as one who quits ! Your blustering here this afternoon can hardly conceal the fact of your failure, your inability to keep a promise. I had hoped you would really be of some help to Sister Theresa; you quite deceived her,—she told me as she left to-day that she thought well of you, —she really felt that her fortunes were safe in your hands. But, of course, that is all a matter of past history now.”

Her tone, changing from cold indifference to the most severe disdain, stung me into self-pity for my stupidity in having sought her. My anger was not against her, but against Pickering, who had, I persuaded myself, always blocked my path. She went on.

“You really amuse me exceedingly. Mr. Pickering is decidedly more than a match for you Mr. Glenarm, —even in humor.”

She left me so quickly, so softly, that I stood staring like a fool at the spot where she had been, and then I went gloomily back to Glenarm House, angry, ashamed and crestfallen.

While we were waiting for dinner I made a clean breast of my acquaintance with her to Larry, omitting nothing,—rejoicing even to paint my own conduct as black as possible.

“You may remember her,” I concluded, “she was the girl we saw at Sherry’s that night we dined there. She was with Pickering, and you noticed her,—spoke of her, as she went out.”

“That little girl who seemed so bored, or tired ? Bless me ! Why her eyes haunted me for days. Lord man, do you mean to say—”

A look of utter scorn came into his face, and he eyed me contemptuously.

“Of course I mean it !” I thundered at him.

He took the pipe from his mouth, pressed the tobacco viciously into the bowl, and swore steadily in Gaelic until I was ready to choke him.

“Stop !” I bawled. “Do you think that’s helping me? And to have you curse in your blackguardly Irish dialect ! I wanted a little Anglo-Saxon sympathy, you fool ! I didn’t mean for you to invoke your infamous gods against the girl !”

“Don’t be violent, lad. Violence is reprehensible,” he admonished with maddening sweetness and patience. “What I was trying to inculcate was rather the fact, borne in upon me through years of acquaintance, that you are, to be bold, my lad, to be bold,—a good deal of a damned fool.”

The trilling of his r’s was like the whirring rise of a flock of quails.

“Dinner is served,” announced Bates, and Larry led the way, mockingly chanting an Irish love-song.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DOOR OF BEWILDERMENT