nner like ours," he addressed Wallace with a little laugh, "but
it's very, very good. We'll have roast beef, rare and juicy;--if you
bring it any way but a cooked red, I'll send it back;--and potatoes
roasted with the meat and brown gravy. Then the breast of chicken with
the salad, in the French fashion. And I'll make the dressing. We'll have
an ice and some fruit for dessert. Black coffee."

"Yes, sir," replied the waiter, his pencil poised. "And the wines?"

Thorpe ruminated sleepily.

"A rich red Burgundy," he decided, "for all the dinner. If your cellar
contains a very good smooth Beaune, we'll have that."

"Yes, sir," answered the waiter, and departed.

Thorpe sat and gazed moodily into the wood fire, Wallace respected his
silence. It was yet too early for the fashionable world, so the two
friends had the place to themselves. Gradually the twilight fell;
strange shadows leaped and died on the wall. A boy dressed all in white
turned on the lights. By and by the waiter announced that their repast
awaited them.

Thorpe ate, his eyes half closed, in somnolent satisfaction.
Occasionally he smiled contentedly across at Wallace, who smiled in
response. After the coffee he had the waiter bring cigars. They went
back between the tables to a little upholstered smoking room, where
they sank into the depths of leather chairs, and blew the gray clouds
of smoke towards the ceiling. About nine o'clock Thorpe spoke the first
word.

"I'm stupid this evening, I'm afraid," said he, shaking himself. "Don't
think on that account I am not enjoying your dinner. I believe," he
asserted earnestly, "that I never had such an altogether comfortable,
happy evening before in my life."

"I know," replied Wallace sympathetically.

"It seems just now," went on Thorpe, sinking more luxuriously into
his armchair, "that this alone is living--to exist in an environment
exquisitely toned; to eat, to drink, to smoke the best, not like a
gormand, but delicately as an artist would. It is the flower of our
civilization."

Wallace remembered the turmoil of the wilderness brook; the little birch
knoll, yellow in the evening glow; the mellow voice of the summer night
crooning through the pines. But he had the rare tact to say nothing.

"Did it ever occur to you that what you needed, when sort of tired out
this way," he said abruptly after a moment, "is a woman to understand
and sympathize? Wouldn't it have made this evening perfect to have seen