pering, carefully manicured fingers.

Brought up in the lap of luxury, never having expressed a desire that
was not immediately gratified, Grace discovered after a time that
wealth, while useful, has also its drawbacks. Having everything, she
wanted nothing. She found herself wishing there might be something she
could not have, so that for once, at least, she might experience the
emotion of longing for the unattainable.

The plain truth was that Grace was no ordinary girl. She had more brains
than people gave her credit for. Although reared in the tainted
hot-house atmosphere of society, with its degenerate amusements, its low
moral tone and trivial ambitions, she took little real interest in its
shallow, vulgar pleasures. The women she soon discovered to be
empty-headed or frankly immoral; the men were, for the most part,
libertines, gamblers, fortune-hunters. The homage paid to her beauty
flattered her vanity, but once the novelty of her first two seasons had
worn away, surfeited with dinners, receptions, dances, and
bridge-parties, she grew deadly tired of the social treadmill. It ceased
to amuse her. She felt there was something wanting to complete her
happiness. She lost her buoyancy of disposition, her high spirits
disappeared, even her beauty paled. She became depressed and melancholy.
People whispered that she was going into a decline. There had been a
case of consumption in the family, they said. Her father, laughingly
declaring that she was in love, asked for the name of the lucky man.

"Are you going to make the Prince happy at last, child?" he said.

"No, dad," she replied seriously. "It's nothing to do with that. Among
all the men who've paid me attention there's not one I'd marry--now."

What seemed to Grace a more correct diagnosis of her trouble was made by
Mrs. Wesley Stuart, her practical married friend:

"It's only your nerves, my dear--a natural reaction after the pace
you've been going. What you need is a radical change of scene, something
to stimulate your imagination. Take a trip around the world. If you'll
go, I'll go with you."

Wesley Stuart was one of the big men in the Steel Trust and several
times a millionaire. Gossip had long hinted that there was no love lost
between him and his young wife, and she never denied it. He went his
way; she went hers. She had all the money her expensive tastes called
for, and this, coupled with a certain amount of natural cleverness, had
given her consi