The volume was a collection of short stories.  On these I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personal taste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn.  The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men and aristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations only met with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of its functions to the newspapers.  The stories did not seem to me to touch life.  They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed.  They left with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.  Their charm to me lay in the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit was delightful.

But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted.  I read the criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of them were alike:  they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.  I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives for the most part of my poor way of thinking.  The positives, on the other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of treatment of social life entirely new.  Other critics still insisted it was social ridicule:  but if this were so, the satire was too delicate for ordinary detection.

However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame.  At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence.  He at once became the hero of the young women of the country from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many of whom wrote him letters and asked him for his photograph.  He was asked to tell what he really meant by the vague endings of this or that story.  And then I began to hear rumors that his head was turning.  These I discredited, of course.  If true, I thought it but another proof of the undermining influence of feminine flattery, which few men, and fewer young men, can stand.  But I watched his career with interest.

He published other books, of a high moral tone and unapproachable principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of polite society.  But in vain.

CHAPTER II

It was by a mere accident that I went West, some years ago, and settled in an active and thriving town near one of the Great Lakes.  The air and bustle and smack of life about the place attracted me, and I rented an office and continued to read law, from force of habit, I suppose.  My experience in the service of one of the most prominent of New York lawyers stood me in good stead, and gradually, in addition to a