"I think we should never be intimate friends. Apart from the difference in our ages and opinions, there's something about him which I don't seem to get at – like shaking a gloved hand, if you know what I mean."

"Ye-es," said Mirabelle slowly. "It's odd you should have noticed that."

"But it's ungrateful of me to mention even that small objection," continued Andrew. "He's been the soul of kindness, and has shown me all over Paris, introduced me everywhere, and, in general, explained things. I've learned more in three weeks with him than I could have learned myself in a year. So, you see, I couldn't very well help liking him, even if I wanted to help it – which I don't. Why do you ask?"

For an instant Mirabelle's slender hand fluttered toward him with an odd little tentative gesture, and then went back to her cheek.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "Perhaps only for lack of anything else to say. People have told me that they disliked Mr. Radwalader – that they distrusted him."

"I suppose we're all of us disliked and distrusted – by somebody," said Andrew. "But, so far as I'm concerned, Radwalader's my friend. Perhaps you don't know me well enough yet to understand that that means a great deal."

"You're very loyal you mean?" suggested the girl.

"I hope so – yes. I have few friends; but those I have, I care for and respect and, if necessary, defend. They can't be talked against in my presence."

"I wonder," said Mirabelle slowly, "if I'm one of the happy few."

"Decidedly!" said Andrew heartily.

"Do you mean," she continued, "that you care for me as you care for these other friends, that you – that you respect me, and that you'd defend me – if necessary?"

"Decidedly, decidedly! I hope I've proved the first two, and I hope there'll never be any cause to prove the last. But if there is, you may count on me."

Mirabelle looked at him for a moment, and then leaned back and closed her eyes.

"Thank you," she said. "You don't know what that means to me."

"Why, how serious you are over it!" laughed Andrew. "Does it seem to you so very wonderful? To me it appears to be the most natural thing in the world."

"Ah, to you, perhaps," answered Mirabelle. "But to me – yes, it does seem very wonderful. You see – I've never had it said to me before!"

CHAPTER VIII
A PARLEY AND A PRAYER

May was close upon the heels of June before there came a change, but one afternoon, as Andrew paused in his playing, an atmosphere of new intimacy seemed to touch him. He had been alone with Margery for half an hour, and something in the music – or was it only fancy? – told him that her thoughts were occupied with him. She had greeted him with a little air of weariness – but not unfriendly – and, as he took her hand, she looked at him with some indefinite question in her eyes. The impression made by this gained on him as they talked, and, more strongly, as he played. Once or twice he was upon the point of turning abruptly and seeking the clue, but he had been so long perplexed, so long uncertain, that he hesitated still. If only she would give him an opening, if she would but come, as she had often come at Beverly, to lean above him, humming the words of some song into which he had unconsciously drifted, then had he had the courage to turn, to grip her hands, to ask her…

"I wonder if we would, even if we could," she said.

"What?" asked Andrew.

"How should you be expected to know? I've been a thousand miles away – thinking of Omar. I mean whether we would 'shatter it to bits, and then remould it nearer to the heart's desire.'"

Andrew swung round on the piano-stool, slowly chafing his palms together. He did not dare trust himself to look at her. For the first time since they had met in Paris, he caught an echo of the old life in her tone.

"I wonder if we could, even if we would," he answered. "I think so – perhaps. Whatever set you thinking about that?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Margery, with a short laugh. "Sometimes, in my own little way, I'm quite a philosopher! I was just thinking that if any of us were given the chance to change things – everything – shatter 'the sorry scheme of things' into bits, as Omar says – we should perhaps make an equally sorry bungle of the task of reconstruction. We're always saying 'If!' but when it actually came to the point, do you suppose we'd really want anything to be different?"

Again that singular, appealing query in her eyes. It was the old Margery at last, simple, serious, and candid. There was a responsive light in Andrew's face as he replied:

"Some things, no doubt. I don't think I could suggest a desirable change in you – except one. Will you let me tell you?"

Margery nodded.

"It's more of a restoration than a change," continued Andrew. "I'd like to see you, in every respect, precisely as you were at Beverly."

"And am I not? A little older, of course, and bound to be more dignified, as becomes a young woman in society; but for the rest, I'd be sorry to think you find a change in me."

Andrew wheeled back to the piano, and refingered a few chords.

"Now that you've seen the world," he said presently, "tell me what pleases you most in life."

And he faced her again, smiling.

"Motion!" replied Margery promptly. "I can't explain that, but I know it's so. Motion! I don't care what kind, just so long as it shows that the world is alive and happy. I love to see things run and leap – a man, or a horse, or a dog. I love the surf, the trees in a wind; all evidences of strength, of activity, of – well, of life in every and any form. Not so much dancing. That always seems to me to be a forced, an artificial kind of movement, unless it's very smoothly done – and you know, almost every one hops! But I could watch swimming and driving and rowing for hours, and, for that matter, any outdoor sport – racing, football, lacrosse – anything which gives one the idea that men are glad to be alive!"

"How curious!" said Andrew.

"Curious? Why?"

"Because that's a man's point of view, not a girl's. I ask you what pleases you most in life, and I expect that you're going to say music, or flowers, or the play. Instead, you cut out remorselessly everything which one naturally associates with a woman's way of amusing herself, and give me an answer which sounds as if it came from one of the lads at St. Paul's. That's the way they used to talk, exactly. It was all rush, vim, get-up-and-get-out, with them. If you know what I mean, they breathed so hard and talked so fast that it always seemed to me as if they'd just come in from running in a high wind."

"Yes," agreed Margery, with a nod. "I know. That's what I like. That's what I call the glad-to-be-alive atmosphere."

There fell a little silence. Andrew's fine eyes were tiptoeing from point to point of the big, over-furnished salon with a kind of amazed disgust. He had not known that there were so many hideous things in the world. Madame Palffy worshipped at the twin altars of velvet and gilt paint. Much of what now encumbered the room and smote the eye had been picked up in Venice, at the time of her ponderous honeymoon with the apoplectic Palffy. That was twenty years before, when the calle back of the Piazza were filled with those incalculable treasures of tapestry, carved wood, and ivory now in the palazzi of rich Venetians – if, indeed, they are not in Cluny. But the Palffys were as stupid as they were pompous. They moved heavily round and round the Piazza, and furnished their prospective salon out of the front windows of smirking charlatans. The irreparable and damning results of their selection, as Andrew now surveyed them, had been modified – or, more exactly, exaggerated – by the subsequent purchases of two decades in the flamboyant bazars of the Friedrichs Strasse, in the "art departments" of the big shops on Regent and Oxford streets, and in the degenerate galleries of the Palais Royal. Madame Palffy's idea of statuary was a white marble greyhound asleep upon a cushion of red sarrancolin: and her taste ran to Bohemian glass, to onyx vases, and to plaques with broad borders of patterned gilt, enclosing heads of simpering Neapolitan girls – these last to hang upon the wall. There were spindle-legged chairs, with backs like golden harps, and seats of brocade wherein salmon-pink and turquoise-blue wrestled for supremacy; and in front of the huge mantel (logically decked with a red lambrequin) there was a velvet ottoman in the form of a mushroom, whereon when Monsieur Palffy sat, his resemblance to a suffocating frog became absolutely startling. The rest of the furniture was so massive as to suggest that it could have been moved to its present position by no agency less puissant than a glacier, and, for the most part, the upholstery was tufted, and so tightly stuffed that one slid about on the chairs and sofas as if they had been varnished. The room contained four times as much of everything as was appropriate or even decent, and this gave all the furnishings the air of being on exhibition and for sale. One's imagination, however, was not apt to embrace the possibility, under any conceivable circumstances, of voluntary purchase.

Presently Andrew's eyes came back to Margery. It was evident that she had been watching him: for she smiled whimsically.

"Well?" she suggested.

"Can you guess what I was thinking?" he asked, with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

"In part, I imagine," said Margery. "Wasn't it something like this: that, as a matter of fact, I have pretty well shattered my scheme of things to bits and remoulded it – and that the new arrangement is not altogether a success?"

"I don't seem to see you in these surroundings," returned Andrew evasively. "At Beverly you seemed to 'belong': you were all of a piece with the life. Here – well, it's different. That was why I asked you that question, and that was why I thought there was something about you which I wanted to see changed – or restored. You know we used to be very open with each other, very good friends in every sense of the word; but now something's come between us. I've felt it all along, and I thought perhaps it was that you'd stopped caring for the things that used to mean most to you, that new interests, and perhaps your success and the compliments that people pay you, had cut the old ties, and that you had new ideas and ideals. I've felt – I've felt, Miss Palffy, that I'd forfeited even the small place I had in your life. You've been holding me at a distance, haven't you? I've thought so. I asked you that question to see if I was right or wrong, and to my surprise I find that you are apparently the same as ever. You still love all that made the sympathy between us. Well, then, the fault must be in me. Tell me: what have I done, that you treat me almost as a stranger?"

"I'm sorry, very sorry," said Margery earnestly. "If I've given you any such impression, believe me, it was quite without reason or even intention. I've always looked upon you as one of my best friends. Surely, I've not been holding you at a distance: that must have been a fancy of yours. You must know that you're always welcome here, that I'm always glad to see you. Please believe that."

But the little restraint was there!

"I can't quite explain what I mean," said Andrew. "You see, Paris is a queer sort of place. It upsets all one's notions. There's so much that's strange and interesting and new all about us that we're apt to find the old things growing dim. I know, in my own case, that I'm wiser for these few weeks, and perhaps" – he laughed unevenly – "sadder! Forgive me for thinking that it might have been the same with you. This big city is so full of fascinations of one sort or another, that one can hardly be blamed if one is distracted at the first. Until I saw you that Sunday at Mrs. Carnby's, I'd never realized what a difference a few months might make. Your voice brought back – a lot! I forgot that it was all in the past, that we couldn't pick up things as they were in Beverly – the sailing, the bathing, the horseback rides, the golf, and all the rest. Those months had made you a woman and me a man. Much that we used to do and say was done and said and finished with forever. But I did hope that the spirit of the thing would remain, that we'd 'grown parallel to each other,' as Mrs. Carnby says, and that we'd be nearer together, instead of farther apart, for the separation. But no! It isn't a fancy on my part. There's something changed. Do you remember Wordsworth? 'There hath passed away a glory from the earth' – and, Miss Palffy, there has, there has! I know I'm not wrong – something's come between us, and that something is just what I've said – Paris! Isn't it?"

"Yes!" she answered, with her eyes on his.

But Andrew Vane, the blind, did not understand.

Margery rose, almost with a shudder, crossed the room, and stood at the window opening upon the balcony. Below, a whirling stream of cabs, bound in from Longchamp, split around the island in the centre of the place, merged again upon the opposite side, and went rocking and rattling on, up the Avenue Victor Hugo, toward the Arc. In curious contrast to this continuous and flippant clatter, the harsh bell of St. Honoré d'Eylau was striking six.

"I hate it!" said the girl. "I couldn't attempt to make you understand how I loathe Paris, and how home-sick for America I am. Here – I can't express it, but the shallowness and the insincerity and the – the immorality of these people gets into one's blood. It's all pretence, sham, and heartless, cynical impurity. At first I didn't see it – I didn't understand. I was dazzled with the lights, and the fountains, and the gaiety. I was lonely – yes: but when I remembered all there was to see and do, remembered that here is the best in art and music and what not, I thought I should be happy. But it's the beauty of a tropical swamp, Mr. Vane – there's poison in the air! You wouldn't think I'd feel that, would you? – but I do. It's all around me. I can't shut it out. I meet it here, there – everywhere. It sickens me. It chokes me. It's just as if something that I couldn't fight against, that was bound to conquer me in the end, struggle as I might, were trying to rob me of all my beliefs, and ideals, and trust in the honour of men and the goodness of women. I hate it! I'd give – oh, what wouldn't I give! – to be back in America, on the good, clean North Shore, where things – where things are straight!"

She turned upon him suddenly, her eyes full of a strange trouble that was almost fear.

"Do you see?" she added.

"Yes," said Andrew slowly. "I think I see. That's what I meant; that's how I thought you would feel. I'm sorry. You're right, of course: Paris is no place for a girl – like you."

"It's no place for any one who loves what's clean and decent," said Margery hotly. "It's no place for a man! I'm not supposed to know, am I, about such things? And perhaps I don't. I couldn't tell you exactly what I mean, even if I wanted to. But I feel it here." She laid her hand upon her throat. "I feel the danger that I can't describe. It strangles me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for its influence upon any one for whom – for whom I might care. I'm afraid for myself. It's nothing definite, you see, and that's just where it seems to me to be so dangerous. Do you remember when we were reading Tennyson at Beverly – 'The Lotus Eaters'?"

She paused for an instant, and then, looking away from him again, recited the lines:

"'For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings,
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things,
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.'"

There was something in her voice more eloquent than the music of the words. Andrew came forward a step, as if he would have touched her, but she looked up and met his eyes.

"And you're afraid – ?" he began.

"I'm afraid," she answered, "that we've come to a land where it seems always afternoon; and that if we don't take heed, my friend, we may not fight a good fight, we may not keep the faith."

She made an odd little weary gesture.

"Will you play some of the 'Garden' now?" she asked. "I think I should like it. I'm just the least bit blue."

Andrew hesitated, but the words he wanted would not come. He turned back to the piano, fingered the music doubtfully for a moment, and then began to play. There was no need to voice the words. They both knew them well, and they fitted, as, somehow, the verse of Omar has a knack of doing.

"Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who
Before us passed the Door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road
Which to discover we must travel too."

"I'm glad I know you," he broke in impulsively, with his fingers on the keys. "You're a good friend."

Margery made no reply.

"My grandfather, who's the best old chap in all the world," continued Andrew, playing the following crescendo softly, "is the only other person of whom I can feel that as you make me feel it. He always calls me 'Andy.' I rather like that silly little name. I wonder – "

He swung round, facing her.

"I think we're both of us a trifle homesick, Miss Palffy. I wonder if you'd mind – calling me – that?"

He looked down for a second, and in that second Margery Palffy moistened her lips. When she spoke, it seemed to her that her voice sounded harsh and dry.

"I shall be very glad, if you wish it – Andy."

"Thank you. And I – ?"

"If you like – yes. After all, as you say, we're friends – and a little homesick."

"Thank you, Margery."

Andrew resumed his playing, turning a few pages.

"Ah, Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits – and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"

Behind him, the girl, unseen, unheard, was whispering a word for every chord. Once, her hand went out toward the smooth, close-cropped head, bent in eager attention above the score.

"Ah, Love!" said the music.

"Ah, love!" whispered Margery Palffy.

"What a lot there is in this!" exclaimed Andrew, crashing into two sharps.

"Yes."

Once more, to Margery, her voice seemed cold and hard.

"The good old days at Beverly – what?" said Andrew.

"Yes."

Andrew dawdled with the andante.

"Ah, Moon of my Delight, that knows no wane – "

"I must be going," he said, and rose to take her hand.

"I wonder," he added, retaining it, "if you know that I would give the world to ask you just one question – and be certain of the answer?"

"Not now," said Margery steadily, "not now, please. I have many things to think of. Listen. I'm going down to Poissy – to the Carnbys', to-morrow. I know they mean to ask you over Sunday; and then, my friend, you can ask me – whatever you will. No, please. Good-by."

From the window she watched him stroll across to the little island in the centre of the place, there pause to await the coming of the tram, and then, mounting to the impériale, light a cigarette. Presently, with hee-hawing of its donkey-horn, the tram swerved into the avenue again.

The girl leaned her cheek against the heavy curtain. The tram dwindled into the distance – toward the Arc – toward the brilliant centre of Paris – toward danger! Then, in a still small voice, she prayed:

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who – who trespass against us. And lead us – lead us not into temptation: but deliver us from evil…"

CHAPTER IX
THE WOMAN IN THE CASE

In the sun-spangled stretch of shade under the acacias of the Villa Rossignol four drank coffee and talked of Andrew Vane. Mrs. Carnby had remained in Paris three weeks beyond her usual time; first, because the weather had been no more than bearably warm; and second, because the decorator who was renovating the salon of the villa had been somewhat more than bearably slow. The first of June, however, found her at Poissy, and the Villa Rossignol once more prepared to receive and discharge a continually varying stream of guests with the regularity of a self-feeding press.

There was something very admirable about the hospitality of the Villa Rossignol. In the first place, there were fourteen bedrooms; and in the second, a hostess who never made plans for her guests; and in the third, no fixed hour for first breakfast. People came by unexpected trains, and, finding every one out, ordered, as the sex might be, whiskey and cigarettes, or tea and a powder-box, and were served, and, in general, made themselves at home, till Mrs. Carnby returned from driving or canoeing. And seemingly there was always a saddle-horse at liberty in the stable, no matter how many might be riding; and a vacant corner to be found, inside or out, without regard to the number of tête-à-têtes already in progress. In a word, Mrs. Carnby knew to perfection how laisser aller and whom laisser venir– the which, all said and done, appear to be the qualities most admirable in an out-of-town hostess, by very reason, perhaps, of their being the least common.

So, at all events, thought Mrs. Carnby's three guests as they took their coffee-cups from her and, sipping the first over-hot spoonfuls cautiously, shuffled a few topics of conversation, in an attempt to find one which invited elaboration. They were consumedly comfortable: for breakfast had been served on the stroke of one, with five members of the house-party absent. The remaining three were grateful for a punctuality which was not concerned with the greatest good of the greatest number.

"It was so wise of you not to wait breakfast, Louisa," observed Mrs. Ratchett, and her voice resembled as much as anything the purr of a particularly well-bred kitten. "I was as hollow as a shell an hour ago. By this time I'd infallibly have caved in."

"It's nothing short of imbecile to wait for people who're out in an automobile," replied Mrs. Carnby. "Whenever any one brings a machine down here, and takes some of my guests to ride, I have all the clocks in the house regulated, and order Armand to announce breakfast and dinner on the stroke of the hour. It's only just to the sane people who may happen to be visiting me."

"In the present instance," put in Radwalader, "it's to be supposed that the others will have sense enough to get breakfast at the spot nearest available to that of the breakdown."

"The breakdown? You take a deal for granted, Radwalader," said Gerald Kennedy, gazing up into the shifting foliage of the acacias.

"I, too, have been en auto," answered Radwalader, "and am familiar with the inevitable feature of a run. At this moment Andrew Vane is in his shirt-sleeves and a pitiful perspiration, violently turning a crank and talking under his breath. Or else he's flat on his back, under the car, with only his feet sticking out. Can you believe otherwise, after the evidence of those five vacant chairs?"

"How sensible we are, we four!" smiled Mrs. Ratchett.

"Ours is the conservatism of the lilies of the field," supplemented Radwalader. "We spin not, therefore neither do we toil."

"I fancy Vane is regretting having left his chauffeur to breakfast in the servant's hall," said Kennedy.

"And I, that, if anything, Vane is the better mechanician of the two," said Radwalader. "The boy's aptitude is really quite astounding. He learned that machine in an hour, Pivert tells me, and now knows it better than Pivert himself. He's only renting it by the week, you know, but old Mr. Sterling will be called upon for the purchase-price, if I'm not mistaken, before he's a month older."

"One might be justified in remarking," said Mrs. Ratchett, "that Andrew Vane is – er – going it – don't you think? – in a fashion little short of precipitous."

"Wein – Weib – Gesang," murmured Kennedy, with his eyes in the trees.

"I know he sings," commented Mrs. Carnby, "but I hadn't heard of his drinking."

"Or of his – oh yes I had, too!" Mrs. Ratchett caught herself up abruptly, with a suspicion of a blush. "Some one told me he was fast going to the – er – "

"Cats?" suggested Kennedy amiably.

"Gerald, you're indecent!" exclaimed Mrs. Carnby. "And remember, I won't listen to gossip about my guests – except Madame Palffy. For the moment, Mr. Vane's reputation is under the protection of mine."

Radwalader leaned back in his chair, and yawned without shame.

"Vane is developing, that's all," he said. "It's a thing rather to be desired than otherwise. Paris does such a deal for the raw American, in the way of opening his eyes. Vane is just beginning to 'learn how.' I've no doubt that in Boston he ate his lettuce with sugar and vinegar, and thought it effeminate to have his nails manicured. Now that he's acquiring the art of living, pray make some allowance for the crude colouring of his exquisses. The finished picture will be a creation of marked merit, I warrant you. I've seen a good bit of Vane, and he can be trusted to take care of himself."

"The question is whether he can be trusted to have other people take care of him," said Mrs. Ratchett viciously, looking at Radwalader over the edge of her coffee-cup.

"I don't think you dangerous, dear lady."

"Radwalader is always so unselfish," said Mrs. Carnby. "He escapes embarrassing situations by walking out on other people's heads."

"I deserved it," laughed Mrs. Ratchett. "But I really wasn't thinking of you, Radwalader. I heard there was a lady in the case of Mr. Vane."

"I credit him with more originality," said Radwalader. "No, believe me, the facts are no more than must be expected in a young man who has been tied to apron-strings for an appreciable number of years."

"Not that old Mr. Sterling wears aprons," observed Mrs. Carnby.

"And not that I was referring to old Mr. Sterling. I had in mind the very estimable United States of America, which wash so much dirty linen in public that it would be something more than surprising if there were not a supply of particularly starchy apron-strings continually on hand – in Boston in particular. Vane has been taught her creed, which is to make a necessity of virtue. His daily fare has been a rechauffé of worn-out fallacies. I haven't a doubt but what he's been instructed that an honest man is the noblest work of God, and I've no idea that he's ever understood till now that vice is its own reward, or how immaterial it is whether a thing is gold or not, so long as it really glitters."

He turned a tiny glass of fine into his coffee, and continued, stirring it thoughtfully:

"What happens when you turn your stable-bred colt out to pasture for the first time? Doesn't he kick up his heels and snort? Assuredly. And we don't take that as an evidence, do we, that, all in good time, he won't run neck and neck with the best of them, and perhaps carry off the Grand Prix? I always believe in cultivating charity, if only for one comfortable quality attributed to it. Let's be charitable in the case of Vane. He's only kicking up his heels and snorting."

"If you're going to assume the mantle of charity with the view of covering the multitude of your sins – !" suggested Mrs. Carnby.

"We'll have to send it to the tailor's to have the tucks let out," said Radwalader, with infinite good humour. "Exactly, dear friend. Forgive me my little sermon. You see, the physician doesn't preach, as a rule, and I'm afraid the priest is equally unapt to practise. You must pardon me my shortcomings. I can't very well be all things to all men – much less to one woman. And, while we are on this subject, it may interest you to know that Vane has chosen his profession: he's going to be a novelist."

"Do you mean that he's going to write novels?" asked Mrs. Carnby.

Radwalader appeared to reflect.

"No," he said presently. "I think I mean that he's going to be a novelist. I stand open to correction," he added, with an affected air of humility.

"By no means," answered Mrs. Carnby. "Probably I don't understand. It sounds to me a good deal like saying he's going to be a German Emperor or a Pope – that's all."

"Nevertheless, I'm quite sure that's what I mean. He has read me several chapters of a novel upon which he's at work, and I must say that they display a knowledge of women which, in a man of his years, is nothing less than remarkable."

"That's not impossible," put in Mrs. Carnby. "I had a letter, only yesterday, from a woman who knows him, and it appears that he's as good as engaged to a very charming young American."

"However," said Radwalader mildly, "I think the knowledge of women displayed by Vane in the chapters he was so good as to read to me is hardly such as one would expect to deduce from the fact that he is as good as engaged to a very charming young American."

"His choice of a profession must be a very recent resolution," said Mrs. Carnby. "To be sure, until to-day, I haven't seen him in a week."

"An eternity in Paris," said Kennedy. "Extra-ordinary people, the Americans! Not content with securing monopolies of tramways and industrial trusts over here, they appear to control a monopoly of feminine consideration as well. I confess – though only to the acacias – that I'm in the least degree weary of the subject of Mr. Andrew Vane. Radwalader, I'll give you twenty at cannons."

"Done!" said Radwalader, rising.

"The cigars are on the corner-table in the billiard-room," observed Mrs. Carnby, "and the Scotch is on the dining-room buffet, with ice and soda. Don't call the servants for a half-hour, at least: it irritates them immeasurably to have their eating confused with other people's drinking."

"I really don't mean it as gossip," said Mrs. Ratchett, as the men vanished into the house. "I'm interested in Mr. Vane. He seems more rational and cleaner-cut than the American cubs one sees over here as a rule; and if he's only going to go the way of the rest of them – if there's a woman in the case – "