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I did not see him again until 1917 when the United States had entered the World War, and I was visiting Paris. This third encounter with young Hyde had in it the dramatic elements of a Greek comedy. Later in this book, I describe how I made Hyde vice-president of the Metropolitan Opera Company, and facilitated his ambition to become a social leader in New York. Unappreciative of this service I had rendered him, and eager for yet greater social opportunities, Hyde had not been content to await the natural termination of my directorship, and had had the impudence to ask me to resign in favour of one of his friends. I had indignantly refused this preposterous request, and served out my term of office. In the insurance investigation there had been, therefore, a certain element of poetic justice in my being the instrument in the hand of destiny to give the little essential fillip to the events that caused his headlong fall from financial eminence. Our meeting in Paris in 1917 supplied the final touch of classic irony. There, Hyde, out of touch with his native land, somewhat chastened by contemplation of his abrupt fall from financial heights, found himself almost a man without a country in the midst of the World War, unable to gratify his ambition to be always in style—and now the style was to be in the military uniform of one’s country.

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