The Wheel of Life | Page 4

and consequently
can't tell whether he is an inglorious Shakespeare or a subject for the
daily press. His mother assures me that he has already written a play
worthy to stand beside Hamlet--but, though she is a charming lady, I'm
hardly convinced by her opinion. The fact remains, however, that he is
going to New York to become a playwright, and that he has two idols
in the market place which, I fancy, you may be predestined to see
demolished. He is simply off his head to meet Roger Adams, the editor
of _The_--something or other I never heard of--and--remember your
budding days and be charitable--a lady who writes poems and signs
herself Laura Wilde. I prepared him for the inevitable catastrophe by
assuring him that the harmless Mr. Adams eats with his knife, and that
the lady, as she writes books, isn't worth much at love-making--the
purpose for which woman was created by God and cultivated by man.
Alas, though, the young are a people of great faith!
Commend me to Mrs. Bridewell, whom I haven't seen since I had the
honour of assisting at the wedding.
Yours ever, BEVERLY PIERCE.
As she finished her reading, Gerty broke into a laugh and carelessly
threw the letter aside on the blue satin quilt.
"I'm glad to hear that somebody has read Laura's poems," she observed.
"But what in thunder am I to do with the chap?" enquired Perry. "God

knows I don't go in for literature, and that's all he's good for I dare say."
"Oh, well, he can eat, I guess," commented Gerty, with consoling irony.
"I've asked Roger Adams to luncheon," pursued Perry, too concerned to
resent her lack of sympathy, "but there are nine chances to one that he
will stay away."
"Experience has taught me," rejoined Gerty sweetly, "that your friend
Adams can be absolutely counted on to stay away. Do you know," she
resumed after a moment's thought, "that, though he's probably the
brainiest man of our acquaintance, I sometimes seriously wonder what
you see in him."
A flush of anger darkened Perry's clear skin, and this sudden change
gave him an almost brutal look. "I'd like to know if I'm a blamed fool?"
he demanded.
Her merriment struck pleasantly on his ears.
"Do you want to destroy the illusion in which I married you?" she
asked. "It was, after all, simply the belief that size is virtue."
The flush passed, and he took in a full breath which expanded his broad
chest. "Well, I'm big enough," he answered, "but it isn't Adam's fault
that he hasn't got my muscle."
With a leisurely glance in the mirror, he settled his necktie in place,
twisted the short ends of his moustache, and then stooped to kiss his
wife before going out.
"Don't you let yourself get seedy and lose your looks," he said as he left
the room.
When he had gone she made a sudden ineffectual effort to rise from
bed; then as if oppressed by a fatigue that was moral rather than
physical, she fell back again and turned her face wearily from the
mirror. So the morning slipped away, the luncheon hour came and went,

and it was not until the afternoon that she gathered energy to dress
herself and begin anew the inevitable and agonising pursuit of pleasure.
The temptation of the morning had been to let go--to relax in despair
from the fruitlessness of her endeavor--and the result of this brief
withdrawal was apparent in the order which she gave the footman
before the open door of her carriage.
"To Miss Wilde's first"--the words ended abruptly and she turned
eagerly, with outstretched hand, to a man who had hurried toward her
from the corner of Fifth Avenue.
"So you haven't forgotten me in six months, Arnold," she said, with a
sweetness in which there was an almost imperceptible tone of
bitterness.
He took her hand in both of his, pressing it for an instant in a quick
muscular grasp which had in it something of the nervous vigor that lent
a peculiar vibrant quality to his voice.
"And I couldn't have done it in six years," he replied, as a singularly
charming smile illumined his forcible rather than regular features, and
brought out the genial irony in his expressive light gray eyes. "If I'd
gone to Europe to forget you it would have been time thrown away, but
I had something better on my hands than that--I've been buying French
racing automobiles--"
As he finished he gave an impatient jerk to the carriage door, a
movement which, like all his gestures, sprang from the nervous energy
that found its outlet in the magnetism of his personality. People
sometimes said that he resembled Perry Bridewell, who was, in fact, his
distant cousin, but the