had not much time for the frivolities of the season,
and he evaded all but the more conspicuous social occasions, at
which Carmen, sometimes with a little temper, insisted that he should
accompany her. "You would come here," he once said, "when you knew I was
immersed in most perplexing business."

"And now I am here," she had replied, in a tone equally wanting in
softness, "you have got to make the best of me."

Was Jack happy in the whirl he was in? Some days exceedingly so. Some
days he sulked, and some days he threw himself with recklessness born
of artificial stimulants into the always gay and rattling moods of Miss
Tavish. Somehow he could get no nearer to Henderson or to Mavick than
when he was in New York. Not that he could accuse Mavick of trying
to conceal anything; Mavick bore to him always the open, "all right"
attitude, but there were things that he did not understand.

And then Carmen? Was she a little less dependent on him, in this wide
horizon, than in New York? And had he noticed a little disposition
to patronize on two or three occasions? It was absurd. He laughed at
himself for such an idea. Old Eschelle's daughter patronize him! And yet
there was something. She was very confidential with Mavick. They seemed
to have a great deal in common. It so happened that even in the little
expeditions of sightseeing these two were thrown much together, and at
times when the former relations of Jack and Carmen should have made them
comrades. They had a good deal to say to each other, and momentarily
evidently serious things, and at receptions Jack had interrupted their
glances of intelligence. But what stuff this was! He jealous of the
attentions of his friend to another man's wife! If she was a coquette,
what did it matter to him? Certainly he was not jealous. But he was
irritated.

One day after a round of receptions, in which Jack had been specially
disgruntled, and when he was alone in the drawing-room of the hotel with
Carmen, his manner was so positively rude to her that she could not but
notice it. There was this trait of boyishness in Jack, and it was one of
the weaknesses that made him loved, that he always cried out when he was
hurt.

Did Carmen resent this? Did she upbraid him for his manner? Did she
apologize, as if she had done anything to provoke it? She sank down
wearily in a chair and said:

"I'm so tired. I wish I were back in New York."

"You don't act like it," Jack replied, gruffly.