his father had often observed, "was not a good
mixer for nothing." He had brought Dr. Archie around during the short
cab ride, and in an hour they had become old friends.

From the moment when the doctor lifted his glass and, looking
consciously at Thea, said, "To your success," Fred liked him. He felt
his quality; understood his courage in some directions and what Thea
called his timidity in others, his unspent and miraculously preserved
youthfulness. Men could never impose upon the doctor, he guessed, but
women always could. Fred liked, too, the doctor's manner with Thea, his
bashful admiration and the little hesitancy by which he betrayed his
consciousness of the change in her. It was just this change that, at
present, interested Fred more than anything else. That, he felt, was his
"created value," and it was his best chance for any peace of mind. If
that were not real, obvious to an old friend like Archie, then he cut a
very poor figure, indeed.

Fred got a good deal, too, out of their talk about Moonstone. From her
questions and the doctor's answers he was able to form some conception
of the little world that was almost the measure of Thea's experience,
the one bit of the human drama that she had followed with sympathy and
understanding. As the two ran over the list of their friends, the mere
sound of a name seemed to recall volumes to each of them, to indicate
mines of knowledge and observation they had in common. At some names
they laughed delightedly, at some indulgently and even tenderly.

"You two young people must come out to Moonstone when Thea gets back,"
the doctor said hospitably.

"Oh, we shall!" Fred caught it up. "I'm keen to know all these people.
It is very tantalizing to hear only their names."

"Would they interest an outsider very much, do you think, Dr. Archie?"
Thea leaned toward him. "Isn't it only because we've known them since I
was little?"

The doctor glanced at her deferentially. Fred had noticed that he seemed
a little afraid to look at her squarely--perhaps a trifle embarrassed by
a mode of dress to which he was unaccustomed. "Well, you are practically
an outsider yourself, Thea, now," he observed smiling. "Oh, I know," he
went on quickly in response to her gesture of protest,--"I know you
don't change toward your old friends, but you can see us all from a
distance now. It's all to your advantage that you can still take your
old interest, isn't it, Mr. Ottenburg?"

"That's exactl