“Yes.  See here, you are not afraid of me, are you?”

“No—­”

“You don’t think I’m one of those long-faced, blue-nosed butters-in, do you?  You have confidence in me, haven’t you?  You know I’m an average and normally sinful man who has made plenty of mistakes and who understands how others make them—­you know that, don’t you, old chap?”

“Y-es.”

“Then you will listen, won’t you, Gerald?”

The boy laid his arms on the desk and hid his face in them.  Then he nodded.

For ten minutes Selwyn talked to him with all the terse and colloquial confidence of a comradeship founded upon respect for mutual fallibility.  No instruction, no admonition, no blame, no reproach—­only an affectionately logical review of matters as they stood—­and as they threatened to stand.

The boy, fortunately, was still pliable and susceptible, still unalarmed and frank.  It seemed that he had lost money again—­this time to Jack Ruthven; and Selwyn’s teeth remained sternly interlocked as, bit by bit, the story came out.  But in the telling the boy was not quite as frank as he might have been; and Selwyn supposed he was able to stand his loss without seeking aid.

“Anyway,” said Gerald in a muffled voice, “I’ve learned one lesson—­that a business man can’t acquire the habits and keep the infernal hours that suit people who can take all day to sleep it off.”

“Right,” said Selwyn.

“Besides, my income can’t stand it,” added Gerald naively.

“Neither could mine, old fellow.  And, Gerald, cut out this card business; it’s the final refuge of the feebleminded. . . .  You like it?  Oh, well, if you’ve got to play—­if you’ve no better resource for leisure, and if non-participation isolates you too completely from other idiots—­play the imbecile gentleman’s game; which means a game where nobody need worry over the stakes.”

“But—­they’d laugh at me!”

“I know; but Boots Lansing wouldn’t—­and you have considerable respect for him.”

Gerald nodded; he had immediately succumbed to Lansing like everybody else.

“And one thing more,” said Selwyn; “don’t play for stakes—­no matter how insignificant—­where women sit in the game.  Fashionable or not, it is rotten sport—­whatever the ethics may be.  And, Gerald, tainted sport and a clean record can’t take the same fence together.”

The boy looked up, flushed and perplexed.  “Why, every woman in town—­”

“Oh, no.  How about your sister and mine?”

“Of course not; they are different.  Only—­well, you approve of Rosamund Fane and—­Gladys Orchil—­don’t you?”

“Gerald, men don’t ask each other such questions—­except as you ask, without expecting or desiring an answer from me, and merely to be saying something nice about two pretty women.”

The reproof went home, deeply, but without a pang; and the boy sat silent, studying the blotter between his elbows.