she had ornamented New York society, had made few real friends. Most of
the girls she had known bored her. They were gushing creatures with a
passion for sharing and imparting secrets, and Ruth's cool reserve had
alienated her from them.
When she married she dropped out. The romance of her wedding gave
people something to talk about for a few days, and then she was
forgotten.
And so it came about that she had her desire and was able practically
to monopolize Kirk. He and she and William Bannister lived in a kind of
hermit's cell for three and enjoyed this highly unnatural state of
things enormously. Life had never seemed so full either to Kirk or
herself. There was always something to do, something to think about,
something to look forward to, if it was only a visit to a theatre or
the inspection of William Bannister's bath.
It was in the third year of the White Hope's life that the placid
evenness of Kirk's existence began to be troubled. The orderly
procession of the days was broken by happenings of unusual importance,
one at least of them extraordinarily unpleasant. This was the failure
of a certain stock in which nearly half of Kirk's patrimony was
invested, that capital which had always seemed to him as solid a part
of life as the asphalt on which he walked, as unchangeable a part of
nature as the air he breathed. He had always had it, and he could
hardly bring himself to realize that he was not always to have it.
It gave him an extraordinary feeling of panic and discomfort when at
length he faced the fact squarely that his private means, on the
possession of which he had based the whole lazy scheme of his life,
were as much at the mercy of fate as the stake which a gambler flings
on the green cloth. He did not know enough of business to understand
the complicated processes by which a stock hitherto supposed to be as
impregnable as municipal bonds had been hammered into a ragged remnant
in the course of a single day; but the result of them was unpleasantly
clear and easily grasped.
His income was cut in half, and instead of being a comfortably off
young man, idly watching the pageant of life from a seat in the grand
stand, he must now plunge into the crowd and endeavour to earn a living
as others did.
For his losses did not begin and end with the ruin of this particular
stock. At intervals during the past two years he had been nibbling at
his capital, and now, forced to examine his affairs frankly and
minutely, he was astonished at the inroads he had made upon it.
There had been the upkeep of the summer shack he had bought in
Connecticut. There had been expenses in connection with William
Bannister. There had been little treats for Ruth. There had been cigars
and clothes and dinners and taxi-cabs and all the other trifles which
cost nothing but mount up and make a man wander beyond the bounds of
his legitimate income.
It was borne in upon Kirk, as he reflected upon these things, that the
