[Illustration: "Watching the city lights ... waiting, listening--always listening." Page 352]
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES DANA GIBSON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON :: MCMXII
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1911, 1912, by International Magazine Company under the title "The Turning Point"
I.--In Forma Pauperis II.--Corpus Delicti III.--Sub Judice IV.--In Loco Parentis V.--De Motu Proprio VI.--Pacta Conventa VII.--Flos Veneris VIII.--Mille Modi Veneris IX.--Non Sequitur X.--Compos Mentis XI.--Quod Erat Faciendum XII.--Nunc Aut Nunquam XIII.--Cui Malo XIV.--Desunt Cætera
"Watching the city lights--watching, listening, always listening" . . . Frontispiece
"A dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan"
"'We *had* to spend all our money on clothes'"
"'Is it because we are merely attractive that you mentioned the relationship?'"
"'As far as I am concerned, the matter is settled'"
"'I wonder just how innocent we really are?' she said"
"Mr. Rivett took in Diana, his son Silvette"
"'Wouldn't it be odd if Jim married that girl?'"
"Presently she caught his eye and made him a pretty gesture"
"The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling silence"
"'I want to gossip with you,' he said abruptly"
"'Oh, dear,' she said, 'there's somebody down there already'"
"Dineen slowly revolved his thumbs and squinted at a sunbeam"
"'Your loyalty to honor deceived a very gentle heart,' he said"
"That night at dinner she was very gay--a charming, sparkling, bewildering creature"
"'Health, happiness, prosperity to them'"
The failure of the old-time firm of Edgerton, Tennant & Co. was unusual only because it was an honest one--the bewildered creditors receiving a hundred cents on a dollar from property not legally involved.
Edgerton had been dead for several years; the failure of the firm presently killed old Tennant, who was not only old in years, but also old in fashion--so obsolete, in fact, were the fashions he clung to that he had used his last cent in a matter which he regarded as involving his personal honor.
The ethically laudable but materially ruinous integrity of old Henry Tennant had made matters rather awkward for his orphaned nieces. Similar traditions in the Edgerton family--of which there now remained only a single representative, James Edgerton 3d--devastated that young man's inheritance so completely that he came back to the United States, via Boston, on a cattle steamer and arrived in New York the following day with two dollars in loose silver and a confused determination to see the affair through without borrowing.