did not prevent his taking copious and intelligent notes at his lecture that night, or interfere with his enjoyment of the Stein of beer with which, after it was over, he washed down its involved German.     

       The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. He did not approve of Stewart exactly, not from any dislike of the man, but from a lack of fineness in the man himself—an intangible thing that seems to be a matter of that unfashionable essence, the soul, as against the clay; of the thing contained, by an inverse metonymy, for the container.     

       Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, and they walked to Stewart's apartment together. The frosty air and the rapid exercise combined to drive away Byrne's irritation; that, and the recollection that it was Saturday night and that to-morrow there would be no clinics, no lectures, no operations; that the great shambles would be closed down and that priests would read mass to convalescents in the chapels. He was whistling as he walked along.     

       Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him, stopped under a street light to consult his watch.     

       “Almost ten!” he said. “I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told Jennie I was going to your pension. She detests Stewart.”      

       “Oh, that's all right. She knows you're playing poker?”      

       “Yes. She doesn't object to poker. It's the other. You can't make a good woman understand that sort of thing.”      

       “Thank God for that!”      

       After a moment of silence Byrne took up his whistling again. It was the       “Humoresque.”      

       Stewart's apartment was on the third floor. Admission at that hour was to be gained only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. The lights were still on, however, in the hallways, revealing not overclean stairs and, for a wonder, an electric elevator. This, however, a card announced as out of order. Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly.     

       “'Out of order'!” he observed. “Out of order since last spring, judging by that card. Vorwarts!”      

       They climbed easily, deliberately. At home in God's country Boyer played golf, as became the 

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