a group on the pier.

"Yes?" said she, absently. The leggy girl had just thrust out her
tongue at an expostulating nurse. She seemed to be a highly
unpleasant child; one of those children of whom aunts speak as "poor
Mary" or whatever their name may be. Anne Champneys, watching her,
put her hand up and touched her own hair, that gleamed under her
close-fitting black hat. Her eyes darkened; she smiled, secretly,
mysteriously, rememberingly.

In that instant Berkeley Hayden made his decision. There was no
longer any doubt in his mind. When she turned away from the railing,
he said pleasantly:

"You and Marcia have put me in the humor to see Florence again. If I
come strolling in upon you some fine day, I hope you'll be glad to
see me, Mrs. Champneys?"

"Oh, yes!" said she, politely. And then Marcia and Vandervelde came
up, and a few minutes later the two men went ashore. Hayden's face
was the last thing Nancy saw as the steamer moved slowly outward.
There were hails, laughter, waving of hand-kerchiefs. He alone
looked at _her_. And so he remained in her memory, standing a little
apart from all others.

CHAPTER XV

"I, TOO, IN ARCADIA"

If Riverton was his mother's house and England his grandmother's,
France was peculiarly his own. Peter Champneys felt that he had come
home, and even the fact that he couldn't speak understandable French
didn't spoil the illusion. Nobody laughed at his barbarous jargon;
people were patient, polite, helpful. He thought the French the
pleasantest people in the world, and this opinion he never changed.
Later, when he learned to know them better, he concluded that they
were very deliberately and very gallantly gay in order to conceal
from themselves and from the world how mortally sad they were at
heart. They eschewed those virtues which made one disagreeable, and
they indulged only in such vices as really amused them, and in
consequence they made being alive a fine art.

The Hemingways knew Paris as they knew London, and they smoothed his
path. In their drawing-room Peter met that dazzling inner circle of
Parisian society which includes talent and genius as well as rank,
beauty, and wealth. Then, Mrs. Hemingway having first seen to it
that he met those whom she wished him to meet, Peter was permitted
to meet those whom he himself wished to meet. He was introduced to
two deceptively mild-mannered young Englishmen, first cousins named
Checkleigh, students in one of the grea