been paying visits to the studio of an artist.'
Mrs. Porter nodded.
'Quite right. Mr. Kirk Winfield. She is going to marry him.'
Bailey's hat fell to the floor. His stick followed. His mouth opened
widely. His glasses shot from his nose and danced madly at the end of
their string.
'What!'
'It will be a most suitable match in every way,' said Mrs. Porter.
Bailey bounded to his feet.
'It's incredible!' he shouted. 'It's ridiculous! It's abominable!
It's...it's incredible!'
Mrs. Porter gazed upon his transports with about the same amount of
interest which she would have bestowed upon a whirling dervish at Coney
Island.
'You have not seen Mr. Winfield, I gather?'
'When I do, he will have reason to regret it. I......'
'Sit down.'
Bailey sat down.
'Ruth and Mr. Winfield are both perfect types. Mr. Winfield is really a
splendid specimen of a man. As to his intelligence, I say nothing. I
have ceased to expect intelligence in man, and I am grateful for the
smallest grain. But physically, he is magnificent. I could not wish
dear Ruth a better husband.'
Bailey had pulled himself together with a supreme effort and had
achieved a frozen calm.
'Such a marriage is, of course, out of the question,' he said.
'Why?'
'My sister cannot marry a, a nobody, an outsider......'
'Mr. Winfield is not a nobody. He is an extraordinarily healthy young
man.'
'Are you aware that Ruth, if she had wished, could have married a
prince?'
'She told me. A little rat of a man, I understand. She had far too much
sense to do any such thing. She has a conscience. She knows what she
owes to the future of the......'
'Bah!' cried Bailey rudely.
'I suppose,' said Mrs. Porter, 'that, like most men, you care nothing
for the future of the race? You are not interested in eugenics?'
Bailey quivered with fury at the word, but said nothing.
'If you have ever studied even so elementary a subject as the colour
heredity of the Andalusian fowl......'
The colour heredity of the Andalusian fowl was too much for Bailey.
'I decline to discuss any such drivel,' he said, rising. 'I came here
to see Ruth, and...'
'And here she is,' said Mrs. Porter.
The door opened, and Ruth appeared. She looked, to Bailey, insufferably
radiant and pleased with herself.
'Bailey!' she cried. 'Whatever brings my little Bailey here, when he
ought to be working like a good boy in Wall Street?'
