I asked Jack and he seemed to think it might be all right if you cared to ask him to play--" "I won't!" cried Alixe, revolted.

"I will not turn my drawing-rooms into a clearing-house for every money-laden social derelict in town! I've had enough of that; I've endured the accumulated wreckage too long!--weird treasure-craft full of steel and oil and coal and wheat and Heaven knows what!--I won't do it, Gerald; I'm sick of it all--sick! sick!" The sudden, flushed outburst stunned the boy.

Bewildered, he stared round-eyed at the excited young matron who was growing more incensed and more careless of what she exposed every second: "I will not make a public gambling-hell out of my own house!" she repeated, dark eyes very bright and cheeks afire; "I will not continue to stand sponsor for a lot of queer people simply because they don't care what they lose in Mrs.Ruthven's house! You babble to me of limits, Gerald; this is the limit! Do you--or does anybody else suppose that I don't know what is being said about us ?--that play is too high in our house ?--that we are not too difficile in our choice of intimates as long as they can stand the pace!" "I--I never believed that," insisted the boy, miserable to see the tears flash in her eyes and her mouth quiver.
"You may as well believe it for it's true!" she said, exasperated.
"T-true!--Mrs.Ruthven!" "Yes, true, Gerald! I--I don't care whether you know it; I don't care, as long as you stay away.

I'm sick of it all, I tell you.

Do you think I was educated for this ?--for the wife of a chevalier of industry--" "M-Mrs.Ruthven!" he gasped; but she was absolutely reckless now--and beneath it all, perhaps, lay a certainty of the boy's honour.