Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/147

 with the smokers, in a near-by anteroom (though he never smoked himself), furtively emerging from time to time to look for Sheilah, and possibly to receive one of her smiles as she swept past him. And sometimes he took her home! Very frequently he took her home after the Millers sold their limousine and dismissed the chauffeur.

The limousine was sold and the chauffeur dismissed during the second year of the war. Sidney Miller manufactured carpets. There wasn't much demand for carpets during the war. It made it awkward for Sidney because the same month war was declared,' he had doubled his capacity for making carpets. The result was he was forced into raising money quickly. Long before it became necessary to sell the limousine and dismiss the chauffeur, Sidney Miller had moved out of his two spacious safe-deposit boxes at the bank, and was paying rent on only one small one. And he rattled around in that! By October, 1915, practically all of the crisp, crinkly papers Sidney used to handle so proudly the first of every month were scattered around in various banks, as collateral, like a family dispersed by force of catastrophic circumstances.

One day it became apparent to Sidney that he had