SHOWS THE HERO TO BE LACKING IN HEROIC QUALITIES When he had parted from Laura Adams walked down Fifth Avenue to Thirty-fifth Street and then turned east in the direction of his own house.

He found upon entering that Connie, as usual, was dining out, and after he had eaten his poorly served dinner alone in the dining-room, he went upstairs with the intention of slipping into his smoking jacket and returning to his study for a peaceful smoke.

The electric lights were blazing in Connie's bedroom, and when he went in to extinguish them, moved by some instinct of economy, he found that the room was in even greater disorder than that to which he had grown, after years of uncomplaining discomfort, outwardly if not inwardly resigned.

Of a naturally systematic habit of thought, Connie's carelessness had been for him one of those petty annoyances of daily life to meet which he had always felt that philosophy had been especially designed; but to-night the chaos struck him so forcibly that he found himself vaguely questioning if it were possible for a human creature to sleep in such a spot?
Picking up several gowns from the middle of the floor, he returned them to the wardrobe, and set himself to clearing the bed of an array of satin shoes.

Her silver hair brushes had fallen on the hearth rug, and in replacing them upon the bureau his eye fell on a small, half-empty phial lying beneath a pile of lace-edged handkerchiefs.