What is an ideal, anyhow?
A wraith, a mist, a perfume in the wind, a dream of fair water.

The soul-yearning of a girl like Antoinette Nowak was a little too strained for him.

It was too ardent, too clinging, and he had gradually extricated himself, not without difficulty, from that particular entanglement.

Since then he had been intimate with other women for brief periods, but to no great satisfaction--Dorothy Ormsby, Jessie Belle Hinsdale, Toma Lewis, Hilda Jewell; but they shall be names merely.

One was an actress, one a stenographer, one the daughter of one of his stock patrons, one a church-worker, a solicitor for charity coming to him to seek help for an orphan's home.