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Waythorn dropped into another chair, staring vaguely ahead of him. On his dressing-table stood a photograph of Alice, taken when he had first known her. She was Alice Varick then how fine and exquisite he had thought her! Those were Varick's pearls about her neck. At Waythorn's instance they had been returned before her marriage.
Waythorn did not know how often he saw Alice, but with himself Haskett was seldom in contact. One afternoon, however, he learned on entering that Lily's father was waiting to see him. In the library he found Haskett occupying a chair in his usual provisional way. Waythorn always felt grateful to him for not leaning back. "I hope you'll excuse me, Mr. Waythorn," he said rising.
But now he saw that Alice was bound to hers both by the circumstances which forced her into continued relation with it, and by the traces it had left on her nature. With grim irony Waythorn compared himself to a member of a syndicate. He held so many shares in his wife's personality and his predecessors were his partners in the business.
The stranger might have been a piano-tuner, or one of those mysteriously efficient persons who are summoned in emergencies to adjust some detail of the domestic machinery. He blinked at Waythorn through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and said mildly: "Mr. Waythorn, I presume? I am Lily's father." Waythorn flushed. "Oh " he stammered uncomfortably. He broke off, disliking to appear rude.
He did not care a farthing for the success of Varick's venture, but the honor of the office was to be considered, and he could hardly refuse to oblige his partner. "Very well," he said, "I'll do it." That afternoon, apprised by telephone, Varick called at the office. Waythorn, waiting in his private room, wondered what the others thought of it. The newspapers, at the time of Mrs.
He listened intently while Sellers put the case before him, and, the statement ended, he said: "You think I ought to see Varick?" "I'm afraid I can't as yet. The doctor is obdurate. And this thing can't wait. I hate to ask you, but no one else in the office knows the ins and outs of it." Waythorn stood silent.
Waythorn sprang up and began to pace the room nervously. He had not suffered half so much from his two meetings with Varick. It was Haskett's presence in his own house that made the situation so intolerable. He stood still, hearing steps in the passage. "This way, please," he heard the nurse say. Haskett was being taken upstairs, then: not a corner of the house but was open to him.
At Eighth Street the man facing him wriggled out and another took his place. Waythorn glanced up and saw that it was Gus Varick. The men were so close together that it was impossible to ignore the smile of recognition on Varick's handsome overblown face. And after all why not? They had always been on good terms, and Varick had been divorced before Waythorn's attentions to his wife began.
I've noticed a change in Lily she's too anxious to please and she don't always tell the truth. She used to be the straightest child, Mr. Waythorn " He broke off, his voice a little thick. "Not but what I want her to have a stylish education," he ended. Waythorn was touched. "I'm sorry, Mr. Haskett; but frankly, I don't quite see what I can do." Haskett hesitated.
"After all, it's only putting it off for six months," he said to himself; "and I can do better work when I get my new instruments." He smiled and raised his hat to the passing victoria of a lady in whose copy of "The Vital Thing" he had recently written: Labor est etiam ipsa voluptas. WAYTHORN, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner.
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