lances cast in their direction. An exciting sport, though
incomprehensible to masculine intelligence. It was a principle with
Lise to pay no attention to any young man who was not "presented,"
those venturing to approach her with the ready formula "Haven't we met
before?" being instantly congealed. She was strict as to etiquette. But
Mr. Wiley, it seemed, could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one
of the ladies to whose arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further
advantage of appearing in a large and seductive touring car, painted
green, with an eagle poised above the hood and its name, Wizard, in a
handwriting rounded and bold, written in nickel across the radiator. He
greeted Miss Schuler effusively, but his eye was on Lise from the first,
and it was she he took with, him in the front seat, indifferent to the
giggling behind. Ever since then Lise had had a motor at her disposal,
and on Sundays they took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of the
state. But it must not be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of
the vehicle; nor was he a chauffeur,--her American pride would not have
permitted her to keep company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator
for the Wizard, something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit
when they whizzed over the tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or
sixty miles an hour with the miner cut out--a favourite diversion of
Mr. Whey's, who did not feel he was going unless he was accompanied by
a noise like that of a mitrailleuse in action. Lise, experiencing a
ravishing terror, hung on to her hat with one hand and to Mr. Wiley with
the other, her code permitting this; permitting him also, occasionally,
when they found themselves in tenebrous portions of Slattery's Riverside
Park, to put his arm around her waist and kiss her. So much did Lise's
virtue allow, and no more, the result being that he existed in a
tantalizing state of hope and excitement most detrimental to the nerves.

He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's
family,--the fine careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of
the free-lance for whom seventy miles an hour has no terrors; the
automobile, apparently, like the ship, sets a stamp upon its votaries.
No Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless coasts ever
exceeded in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. He
would draw up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of
the clay-yellow house, and sometimes