He had come to the restaurant as a relief from his thoughts. If he
could find some kind friend who would invite him to supper, well and
good. If not, he was feeling so tired and depressed that he was ready
to take the bull by the horns and pay for his meal himself. He had
obeyed Miss Freda Reece's signal because it was impossible to avoid
doing so; but one glance at Bailey's face had convinced him that not
there was his kind host.
'Why, Perce,' said Miss Reece, 'I ain't saw you in years. Where you
been hiding yourself?'
Percy gave a languid gesture indicative of the man of affairs whose
time is not his own.
'Percy,' continued Miss Reece, 'shake hands with my friend Mr.
Bannister. I been telling him about how you made such a hit as the pin
in 'Pinafore'!'
The name galvanized Percy like a bugle-blast.
'Mr. Bannister!' he exclaimed. 'Any relation to Mr. John Bannister, the
millionaire?'
Bailey favoured him with a scrutiny through the gold-rimmed glasses
which would have frozen his very spine.
'My father's name is...ah...John, and he is a millionaire.'
Percy met the scrutiny with a suave smile.
'By Jove!' he said. 'I know your sister quite well, Mr. Bannister. I
meet her frequently at the studio of my friend Kirk Winfield. Very
frequently. She is there nearly every day. Well, I must be moving on.
Got a date with a man. Goodbye, Freda. Glad you're going strong. Good
night, Mr. Bannister. Delighted to have made your acquaintance. You
must come round to the studio one of these days. Good night.'
He moved softly away. Miss Reece watched him go with regret.
'He's a good little feller, Percy,' she said. 'And so he knows your
sister. Well, ain't that nice!'
Bailey did not reply. And to the feast of reason and flow of soul that
went on at the table during the rest of the meal he contributed so
little that Miss Reece, in conversation that night with her friend
alluded to him, not without justice, first as 'that stiff,' and, later,
as 'a dead one.'
* * * * *
If Percy Shanklyn could have seen Bailey in the small hours of that
night he would have been satisfied that his words had borne fruit. Like
a modern Prometheus, Bailey writhed, sleepless, on his bed till
daylight appeared. The discovery that Ruth was in the habit of paying
clandestine visits to artists' studios, where she met men like the
little bounder who had been thrust upon him at supper, rent his haughty
soul like a bomb.
He knew no artists, but he had read novels of Bohemian life in Paris,
and he had gathered a general impression that they were, as a class,
shock-headed, unwashed persons of no social standing whatever,
extremely short of money and much addicted to orgies. And his sister
had lowered herself by association with one of these.
He rose early. His appearance in the mirror shocked him. He looked
