“I did!—­not to Captain Selwyn—­I was ashamed to.  But I went to Austin and he fired up and lit into me—­and we had a muss-up—­and I’ve stayed away since.”

“Oh, Gerald!  And it simply proves me right.”

“No, it doesn’t; I did go to Neergard and made a clean breast of it.  And he let me have what I wanted like a good fellow—­”

“And made you promise not to do it again!”

“No, he didn’t; he only laughed.  Besides, he said that he wished he had been in the game—­”

“What!” exclaimed Alixe.

“He’s a first-rate fellow,” insisted Gerald, reddening; “and it was very nice of you to let me bring him over to-day. . . .  And he knows everybody downtown, too.  He comes from a very old Dutch family, but he had to work pretty hard and do without college. . . .  I’d like it awfully if you’d let me—­if you wouldn’t mind being civil to him—­once or twice, you know—­”

Mrs. Ruthven lay back in her seat, thoroughly annoyed.

“My theory,” insisted the boy with generous conviction, “is that a man is what he makes himself.  People talk about climbers and butters-in, but where would anybody be in this town if nobody had ever butted in?  It’s all rot, this aping the caste rules of established aristocracies; a decent fellow ought to be encouraged.  Anyway, I’m going to propose, him for the Stuyvesant and the Proscenium.  Why not?”

“I see.  And now you propose to bring him to my house?”

“If you’ll let me.  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—­”