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Dead, dormant, departed, she knew not which, she was dully aware of its loss–dimly and childishly troubled that she could remember nothing to be sorry for. And there was so much.

Men in his profession who knew him began to look askance at him and her, amused or otherwise, according to their individual characters.

That Cecile White went about more or less with the sculptor Drene was a nine days’ gossip among circles familiar to them both, and was forgotten–as are all wonders–in nine days.

Some of his acquaintances recalled what had been supposed to be the tragedy of his life, mentioning a woman’s name, and a man’s–Drene’s closest friend. But gossip does not last long among the busy–not that the busy are incapable of gossip, but they finish with it quickly, having other matters to think about.

Even Quair, after recovering from his wonder that his own condescending advances had been ignored, bestowed his fatuously inflammable attentions elsewhere.

He had been inclined to complain one day in the studio, when he and Guilder visited Drene professionally; and Guilder looked at his dapper confrere in surprise and slight disgust; and Drene, at first bored, grew irritable.

“What are you talking about?” he said sharply.

“I’m talking about Cecile White,” continued Quair, looking rather oddly at the sculptor out of his slightly prominent eyes. “I didn’t suppose you could be interested in any woman–not that I mind your interfering with any little affair between Cecile and me–“

“There wasn’t any.”

“I beg your pardon, Drene–“

“There wasn’t any!” repeated Drene, with curt contempt. “Don’t talk about her, anyway.”

“You mean I’m not to talk about a common artist’s model–“

“Not that way.”

“Oh. Is she yours?”

“She isn’t anybody’s, I fancy. Therefore, let her alone, or I’ll throw you out of doors.”

Quair said to Guilder after they had departed:

“Fancy old Drene playing about with that girl on a strictly pious basis! He’s doubtless dub enough to waste his time. But what’s in it for her?”

“Perhaps a little unaccustomed masculine decency.”

“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 always seemed to him a trifle soiled.

Now, looking him over as he climbed into the car, unusually red in the face, breathing out the aroma of spirits through his little, pinched nostrils, a faint sensation of disgust came over the senior member of the firm as though the junior member were physically unclean.

“That’s about ten drinks since luncheon,” he remarked, as the car rolled on down Fifth Avenue.

Quair, who usually grew disagreeably familiar when mellow, poked his gloved thumb:

“You’re a merry old cock, aren’t you?” he inquired genially, “–like a pig’s wrist! If I hadn’t the drinking of the entire firm to do, who’d ever talk about Guilder and Quair, architects?”

It was common rumor that Quair did his brilliant work only when “soused.” And he never appeared to be perfectly sober, even when he was.