it, and he found himself more and more drawn to her. Neither of them thought of their friendship save as friendship. But it would have been a feat of no mean proportions to convince those who saw them together that there was nothing questionable about their relationship. Her halting suggestion to Carl that he might bring unpleasant comment upon himself if he were seen too frequently with her had angered him—he resolved to go with her wherever and whenever he chose.
This affair, together with the known fact that Carl was drinking rather heavily, was all that was needed to consign him to the outermost circles. His family’s standing saved him from complete condemnation, though at the same time it brought more criticism upon him. He knew that had he come from a less respected family little would have been said regarding his derelictions. But the fact of his dissipation, which he took little pains to conceal, only furnished the groundwork for the reputation that grew with startling speed. Bandied about over teacups and back fences, across pews and shop-counters, through telephone and letter, a character of infinitely intricate pattern was woven around him.
All this meant little to Carl, however. He knew now that his feeling towards Mimi was not the disinterested, impersonal affair he had thought it. Women were queer, he concluded. At times they can be as ruthless and as without scruples as pirates or highwaymen and then turn right around and permit farfetched and ultra-chivalrous and foolish little consciences to destroy happiness for themselves and for others. He knew Mimi did not love him but he could not understand why she had insisted, all because she felt she owed some vague sort of duty to Hilda, that they sacrifice all the happiness there had been for them in their companionship.
And while Carl was rambling through the misty and unhappy realm of his thoughts, Mimi was treading much the same path. She heard the stories of his dissipation—her friends saw to it that she should hear them