us at it, he won't leave us an eye to keep on anything!"

Epstein grunted again.

"Ve keep him busy," he suggested, eagerly. "Start him right avay on another play. Eh? That's the idea!"

Bangs shook his head.

"That's it," he conceded. "But Laurie has decided that he won't work again, just yet. He says he's tired and wants a few months' rest. Besides, he thinks America will declare war before the winter's over. He's going to volunteer as soon as it does, and he doesn't want any loose ends dragging here, any half-finished plays, for example."

Epstein looked worried. This was serious news. Without allowing him time to recover from it, Bangs administered a second jolt.

"And of course, in that case," he added simply, "I'd volunteer, too."

Under the double blow Epstein's head and shoulders went down. He knew in that moment what even he himself had sometimes doubted, that his boasted love for the boys was deep and sincere. Few fathers could have experienced a more poignant combination of pride and pain than that which shook him now. But he remained, as always, inarticulate.

"Oh, vell," he said vaguely, "I guess ve meet all that if it comes, eh? Ve needn't go to it to-day."

At Devon House they found the congestion characteristic of wedding-receptions. A certain line had been drawn at the church. Seemingly no line at all had been drawn in the matter of guests at the reception. All Barbara Devon's protégés were there, and they were many; all the young folks in her clubs; all the old and new friends of her crowded life. Each of the great and beautiful rooms on the main floor of Devon House held a human frieze as a background for the throng of new-comers that grew rather than lessened as the hours passed.

As Bangs and Epstein entered the main hall Laurie Devon saw them over the heads of the crowd and hurried to meet them, throwing an arm across the shoulder of each. He was in a mood both men loved and feared, a mood of high and reckless exhilaration. He liked and approved of his new brother-in-law. The memory of his own New York triumph was still fresh enough to give him a thrill. He was devoted to his partners, and proud of his association with them and their work. But most of all, and this he himself would loyally have denied, deep in his heart he was exulting fiercely over his coming freedom.

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