"Left the office. It couldn't be helped. There was nothing for
him to do. I was sorry--I'm sorrier now----"
He checked himself, hesitated, turned his troubled eyes on Ailsa.
"I _did_ like him so much."
"Don't you like him--still?"
"Yes--_I_ do. I don't know what was the matter with that man. He
went all to pieces."
"W-what!"
"Utterly. Isn't it too bad."
She sat there very silent, very white. Stephen bit into another
cake, angrily.
"It's the company he keeps," he said--"a lot of fast men--fast
enough to be talked about, fashionable enough to be tolerated--Jack
Casson is one of them, and that little ass, Arthur Wye. _That's_
the crowd--a horse-racing, hard-drinking, hard-gambling crew."
"But--he is--Mr. Berkley's circumstances--how can he do such
things----"
"Some idiot--even Berkley doesn't know who--took all those dead
stocks off his hands. Wasn't it the devil's own luck for Berkley
to find a market in times like these?"
"But it ended him. . . . Oh, I was fond of him, I tell you, Ailsa!
I hate like thunder to see him this way----"
"_What_ way!"
"Oh, not caring for anybody or anything. He's never sober. I
don't mean that I ever saw him otherwise--he doesn't get drunk like
an ordinary man: he just turns deathly white and polite.
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