dancing, country clubs. Ruth would have been
caressingly surprised had she known the thought and worried
conscientiousness he gave to the problem of planning "parties" for
her. Ideas were always popping up in the midst of his work, and never
giving him rest till he had noted them down on memo.-papers. He
carried about, on the backs of envelopes, such notes as these:

Join country clb take R dances there?
Basket of fruit for R
Invite Mason W lunch
Orgnze Tcar tour NY to SF
Newspaper men on tour probly Forbes
Rem Walter's new altitude 16,954
R to Astor Roof
Rem country c

He did get a card to the Peace Waters Country Club and take Ruth to a
dance there. She seemed to know every other member, and danced
eloquently. He took her to the Josiah Bagbys' for dinner; to the
first-night of a summer musical comedy. But he was still the stranger
in New York, and "parties" are not to be had by tipping waiters and
buying tickets. Half of the half-dozen affairs which they attended
were of her inspiration; he was invited to go yachting at Larchmont,
motoring, swimming on Long Island, with friends of herself and her
brothers.

One evening that strikes into Carl's memories of those days of the
_pays du tendre_ is the evening on which Phil Dunleavy insisted on
celebrating a Yale baseball victory by taking them to dinner in the
oak-room of the Ritz-Carlton, under whose alabaster lights, among the
cosmopolites, they dined elaborately and smoked slim, imported
cigarettes. The thin music of violins took them into the lonely gray
groves of the Land of Wandering Tunes, till Phil began to talk,
disclosing to them a devotion to beauty, a satirical sense of humor,
and a final acceptance of Carl as his friend.

A hundred other "parties" Carl planned, while dining alone at inferior
restaurants. A hundred times he took a ten-cent dessert instead of an
exciting fifteen-cent strawberry shortcake, to save money for those
parties. (Out of such sordid thoughts of nickel coins is built a love
enduring, and even tolerable before breakfast coffee.)

Yet always to him their real life was in simple jaunts out of doors,
arranged without considering other people. Her father seemed glad of
that. He once said to Carl (giving him a cigar), "You children had
better not let Aunt Emma know that you are enjoying yourselves as you
want to! How is the automobile business going?"

* * * * *

It would be pleasant to relate that Ca