thought I had no moral sense left!" he reflected--not the first man, in
this climax day of the triumph of selfish philosophies, to be astonished
by the discovery that the dead hands of heredity and tradition have a
power that can successfully defy reason.

He started to walk back home, on impulse took a passing taxi and went to
his club. It was the Federal. They said of it that no man who amounted
to anything in New York could be elected a member, because any man on
his way up could not but offend one or more of the important persons in
control. Most of its members were nominated at birth or in childhood and
elected as soon as they were twenty-one. Norman was elected after he
became a man of consequence. He regarded it as one of the signal
triumphs of his career; and beyond question it was proof of his power,
of the eagerness of important men, despite their jealousy, to please him
and to be in a position to get the benefit of his brains should need
arise. Norman's whole career, like every career great and small, in the
arena of action, was a derision of the ancient moralities, a
demonstration of the value of fear as an aid to success. Even his
friends--and he had as many as he cared to have--had been drawn to him
by the desire to placate him, to stand well where there was danger in
standing ill.

Until dinner time he stood at the club bar, drinking one cocktail after
another with that supreme indifference to consequences to health which
made his fellow men gape and wonder--and cost an occasional imitator
health, and perhaps life. Nor did the powerful liquor have the least
effect upon him, apparently. Possibly he was in a better humor, but not
noticeably so. He dined at the club and spent the evening at bridge,
winning several hundred dollars. He enjoyed the consideration he
received at that club, for his fellow members being men of both social