surroundings, bother little about themselves except as
means to what they regard as the end and aim of life--to make
the world each moment as different as possible from what it
was the moment before, to transform the crass and sordid
universe of things with the magic of ideas. Being
intelligent, they prefer good to evil; but they have God's own
horror of that which is neither good nor evil, and spew it out
of their mouths.

At the moment of the arrival of Susan and Palmer the world
that labors at amusing itself was pausing in Paris on its way
from the pleasures of sea and mountains to the pleasures of
the Riviera and Egypt. And as the weather held fine, day
after day the streets, the cafes, the restaurants, offered the
young adventurers an incessant dazzling panorama of all they
had come abroad to seek. A week passed before Susan permitted
herself to enter any of the shops where she intended to buy
dresses, hats and the other and lesser paraphernalia of the
woman of fashion.

"I mustn't go until I've seen," said she. "I'd yield to the
temptation to buy and would regret it."

And Freddie, seeing her point, restrained his impatience for
making radical changes in himself and in her. The fourth day
of their stay at Paris he realized that he would buy, and
would wish to buy, none of the things that had tempted him the
first and second days. Secure in the obscurity of the crowd
of strangers, he was losing his extreme nervousness about
himself. That sort of emotion is most characteristic of
Americans and gets them the reputation for profound
snobbishness. In fact, it is not snobbishness at all. In no
country on earth is ignorance in such universal disrepute as
in America. The American, eager to learn, eager to be abreast
of the foremost, is terrified into embarrassment and awe when
he finds himself in surroundings where are things that he
feels he ought to know about--while a stupid fellow, in such
circumstances, is calmly content with himself, wholly unaware
of his own deficiencies.

Susan let full two weeks pass before she, with much
hesitation, gave her first order toward the outfit on which
Palmer insisted upon her spending not less than five thousand
dollars. Palmer had been going to the shops with her. She
warned him it would make prices higher if she appeared with a
prosperous looking man; but he wanted occupation and
everything concerning her fascinated him now. His ignorance
of the details of fe