annoyance. His son, tracing that glance, felt a movement of kindred
admiration and a renewed sense of his own personal inadequacy. Tony
Adriance had accomplished nothing, yet he was already tired. How would
he look when he was thirty years older? Hardly like that, he feared. Nor
would Fred Masterson! Whose was the fault, and what the remedy?

Mr. Adriance, returning to his coffee, surprised the other's observation
of him, and shrugged an unembarrassed acceptance of the verdict.

"We have plenty of time, you see," he remarked. "Moreover, you are
hardly ready for abstract affairs. You are not sufficiently settled.
After you are married that will come. I myself married young. Marriage
makes private life sufficiently monotonous not to interfere with the
conduct of outside matters of importance."

"Does it?" speculated Tony, doubtingly.

"It should. Monotony is closer to content than is agitation, would you
not say?"

"Doesn't that depend on the kind of monotony?"

"Surely. That is why each man should choose his own wife."

"I see. If I ever choose a wife, I shall remember the advice."

This time Mr. Adriance was astonished. He did not miss the significance
of the remark, or the alteration in Tony since the previous day, when he
had last seen him. It was not possible to be explicit in a matter so
delicate, especially with servants present; but his curiosity was not to
be denied.

"You have not--reached that point? I had fancied----"

"I have no such engagement at present," was the steady reply.

Mr. Adriance pushed away his finger bowl and allowed his cigar to be
lighted by the deferential automaton behind his chair.

"I am sorry," he said.

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