he admiration, that her grace and passion
could win. This was not at all the ambition which led the Egyptian queen
Hatshepsu to assume the dress of a man, but rather that more famous
aspiration which led the daughter of Herodias, in a pleasure-loving
court, to imitate and excel the professional dancing-girls. If in
this inclination of the women of the day, which is not new, but has
characterized all societies to which wealth has brought idleness, there
was a note of demoralization, it did not seem so to Jack, who found the
world day by day more pleasing and more complaisant.

As the months went by, everything prospered with him on his drifting
voyage. Of all voyages, that is the easiest to make which has no port
in view, that depends upon the varying winds, if the winds happen to
be soft and the chance harbors agreeable. Jack was envied, thanks to
Henderson. He was lucky in whatever he touched. Without any change in
his idle habits, and with no more attention to business than formerly,
money came to him so freely that he not only had a complacent notion
that he was a favorite of fortune, but the idea of his own importance
in the financial world increased enormously, much to the amusement of
Mavick, when he was occasionally in the city, to whom he talked
somewhat largely of his operations, and who knew that he had no more
comprehension of the sweep of Henderson's schemes than a baby has of the
stock exchange when he claps his hands with delight at the click of the
ticker.

His prosperity was visible. It showed in the increase of his accounts
at the Union, in his indifference to limits in the game of poker, in a
handsome pair of horses which he insisted on Edith's accepting for her
own use, in an increased scale of living at home, in the hundred ways
that a man of fashion can squander money in a luxurious city. If he
did not haunt the second-hand book-shops or the stalls of dealers in
engravings, or bring home as much bric-a-brac as he once had done, it
was because his mind was otherwise engaged; his tailor's bills were
longer, and there were more expensive lunches at the clubs, at which
there was a great deal of sage talk about stocks and combinations, and
much wisdom exhibited in regard to wines; and then there were the little
suppers at Wherry's after the theatres, which a bird could have eaten
and a fish have drunken, and only a spendthrift have paid for.

"It is absurd," Edith had said one night after their return.