It is not easy in this world to take any definite step without annoyingsomebody, and Kirk, in embarking on his wooing of Ruth Bannister,failed signally to do so. Lora Delane Porter beamed graciously uponhim, like a pleased Providence, but the rest of his circle ofacquaintances were ill at ease.

　　The statement does not include Hank Jardine, for Hank was out of NewYork; but the others--Shanklyn, the actor; Wren, the newspaper-man;Bryce, Johnson, Willis, Appleton, and the rest--sensed impending changein the air, and were uneasy, like cattle before a thunder-storm. Thefact that the visits of Mrs. Porter and Ruth to inquire after George,now of daily occurrence, took place in the afternoon, while they,Kirk's dependents, seldom or never appeared in the studio till drawnthere by the scent of the evening meal, it being understood that duringthe daytime Kirk liked to work undisturbed, kept them ignorant of thenew development.

　　All they knew was that during the last two weeks a subtle change hadtaken place in Kirk. He was less genial, more prone to irritabilitythan of old. He had developed fits of absent-mindedness, and wasfrequently to be found staring pensively at nothing. To slap him on theback at such moments, as Wren ventured to do on one occasion, Wrenbelonging to the jovial school of thought which holds that nature gaveus hands in order to slap backs, was to bring forth a new andunexpected Kirk, a Kirk who scowled and snarled and was hardly to beappeased with apology. Stranger still, this new Kirk could be summonedinto existence by precisely the type of story at which, but a few weeksback, he would have been the first to laugh.

　　Percy Shanklyn, whose conversation consisted of equal parts ofautobiography and of stories of the type alluded to, was the one todiscover this. His latest, which he had counted on to set the table ina roar, produced from Kirk criticism so adverse and so crisplydelivered that he refrained from telling his latest but one and spentthe rest of the evening wondering, like his fellow visitors, what hadhappened to Kirk and whether he was sickening for something.

　　Not one of them had the faintest suspicion that these symptomsindicated that Kirk, for the first time in his easy-going life, was inlove. They had never contemplated such a prospect. It was not till hisconscientious and laborious courtship had been in progress for over twoweeks and was nearing the stage when he felt that the possibility ofrevealing his state of mind to Ruth was not so remote as it had been,that a chance visit of Percy Shanklyn to the studio during theafternoon solved the mystery.

　　One calls it a chance visit because Percy had not been meaning toborrow twenty dollars from Kirk that day at all. The man slated for theloan was one Burrows, a kindly member of the Lambs Club. But fate and atelegram from a manager removed Burrows to Chicago, while Percy wasactually circling preparatory to the swoop, and the only other man inNew York who seemed to Percy good for the necessary sum at that precisemoment was Kirk.