greeable
thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure
beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you
in the face. Your reckonings are over."

"Well, I suppose I am happy," said Newman, meditatively.

"You have been odiously successful."

"Successful in copper," said Newman, "only so-so in railroads, and a
hopeless fizzle in oil."

"It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money.
Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy."

"Oh, I suppose I am very well off," said Newman. "Only I am tired of
having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am
not intellectual."

"One doesn't expect it of you," Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a
moment, "Besides, you are!"

"Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no," said Newman. "I am
not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history,
or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not
a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by
the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here," he
added in a moment, "that I can't explain--a sort of a mighty hankering,
a desire to stretch out and haul in."

"Bravo!" said Mrs. Tristram, "that is very fine. You are the great
Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing a
while at this poor effete Old World and then swooping down on it."

"Oh, come," said Newman. "I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am
very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are."

"I don't mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket
and feathers. There are different shades."

"I am a highly civilized man," said Newman. "I stick to that. If you
don't believe it, I should like to prove it to you."

Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. "I should like to make you prove it,"
she said, at last. "I should like to put you in a difficult place."

"Pray do," said Newman.

"That has a little conceited sound!" his companion rejoined.

"Oh," said Newman, "I have a very good opinion of myself."

"I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will." And Mrs.
Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying
to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded;
but as he was rising to take his leave she passed suddenly, as she was
very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage