He went slowly downstairs and, still in a sort of daze, found himself a few minutes later pouring out a large drink of whiskey in the dining-room. It was his habit to take a bottle of soda with his whiskey, but on this occasion he overcame it and gulped the liquor "neat." It appeared to be rather uplifting, so he had another. Then he went up to his own room and sulked for an hour before even preparing for bed. The more he thought of it, the graver her unseemly affront became.
"And to have her insult me like that," he said to himself over and over again, "when not three minutes before she had let that bally bounder carry her up— By gad, I'll give her something to think about in the morning. She sha'n't do that sort of thing to me. She'll find herself out of a job and with a damned poor reference in her pocket if she gets gay with me. She'll come down from her high horse, all right, all right. Positions like this one don't grow in the park. She's got to understand that. She can't go running around with chauffeurs and all— My God, to think that he had her in his arms! The one girl in all the world who has ever really made me sit up and take notice! Gad, I—I can't stand it—I can't bear to think of her cuddling up to that— The damned bounder!"
He sprang to his feet and bolted out into the hall. He was a spoiled young man with an aversion: an aversion to being denied anything that he wanted.
In the brief history of the Smith-Parvis family he occupied many full and far from prosaic pages. Smith-Parvis, Senior, was not a prodigal sort of person, and yet he had squandered a great many thousands of dollars in his time on Smith-Parvis, Junior. It costs
