e never was a game played so well that some
other fellow could not win by coppering it. So I coppered everything
you did--played it for just the reverse. No go--lost even that way. And
I thought _you_ were the most perennial fool of your age and
generation."

I checked as gently as I could a joviality which I thought unsuited to
the time. "Mr. Dandridge," said I to him, "you know the Baroness von
Ritz?"

"Certainly! The _particeps criminis_ of our bungled wedding--of course I
know her!"

"I only want to say," I remarked, "that the Baroness von Ritz has that
little shell clasp now all for her own, and that I have her slipper
again, all for my own. So now, we three--no, four--at last understand
one another, do we not? Jack, will you do two things for me?"

"All of them but two."

"When the Baroness von Ritz insists on her intention of leaving us--just
at the height of all our happiness--I want you to hand her to her
carriage. In the second place, I may need you again--"

"Well, what would any one think of that!" said Jack Dandridge.

I never knew when these two left us in the crowd. I never said good-by
to Helena von Ritz. I did not catch that last look of her eye. I
remember her as she stood there that night, grave, sweet and sad.

I turned to Elisabeth. There in the crash of the reeds and brasses, the
rise and fall of the sweet and bitter conversation all around us, was
the comedy and the tragedy of life.

"Elisabeth," I said to her, "are you not ashamed?"

She looked me full in the eye. "No!" she said, and smiled.

I have never seen a smile like Elisabeth's.

THE END

EPILOGUE

"'Tis the Star Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave,
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!"
--_Francis Scott Key_.

On the night that Miss Elisabeth Churchill gave me her hand and her
heart for ever--for which I have not yet ceased to thank God--there
began the guns of Palo Alto. Later, there came the fields of Monterey,
Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Cherubusco, Molino del Rey--at last
the guns sounded at the gate of the old City of Mexico itself. Some of
that fighting I myself saw; but much of the time I was employed in that
manner of special work which had engaged me for the last few years. It
was through Mr. Calhoun's agency that I reached a certain importance in
these matters; and so I was chosen as the commissioner to negotiate a
peace with Mexic