“No?  I had nothing to do with it, and, between ourselves, I think he disapproved of me.  If Helen hadn’t told me about him, I should have been very cool to him, his manner was so objectionable.  He clearly talked to me because he felt it a duty, and not a pleasure.”

“That’s only that unfortunate manner of his,” said Helen.  “I really think at heart he’s dreadfully afraid of us.  At least that’s what Watts says.  But he only behaves as if—­as if—­well, you know what I mean, Alice!”

“Exactly,” said Alice.  “You can’t describe it.  He’s so cool, and stolid, and silent, that you feel shoddy and cheap, and any simple little remark doesn’t seem enough to say.  You try to talk up to him, and yet feel small all the time.”

“Not at all,” said Helen.  “You talk down to him, as if he were—­were—­your old grandfather, or some one else you admired, but thought very dull and old-fashioned.”

“But the worst is the way he looks at you.  So gravely, even when you try to joke.  Now I really think I’m passably pretty, but Mr. Stirling said as plainly as could be:  ’I look at you occasionally because that’s the proper thing to do, when one talks, but I much prefer looking at that picture over your head.’  I don’t believe he noticed how my hair was dressed, or the color of my eyes.  Such men are absolutely maddening.  When they’ve finished their smoke, I’m going to make him notice me.”

But Miss Leroy failed in her plan, try as she would.  Peter did not notice girls any more.  After worrying in his school and college days, over what women thought of him and how they treated him, he had suddenly ceased to trouble himself about them.  It was as if a man, after long striving for something, had suddenly discovered that he did not wish it—­that to him women’s opinions had become worthless.  Perhaps in this case it was only the Fox and the Grapes over again.  At all events, from this time on Peter cared little what women did.  Courteous he tried to be, for he understood this to be a duty.  But that was all.  They might laugh at him, snub him, avoid him.  He cared not.  He had struck women out of his plan of life.  And this disregard, as we have already suggested, was sure to produce a strange change, not merely in Peter, but in women’s view and treatment of him.  Peter trying to please them, by dull, ordinary platitudes, was one thing.  Peter avoiding them and talking to them when needs must, with that distant, uninterested look and voice, was quite another.

The next morning, Peter, after finding what a fifth wheel in a coach all men are at weddings, finally stood up with his friend.  He had not been asked to stay on for another night, as had most of the bridal party, so he slipped away as soon as his duty was done, and took a train that put him into New York that evening.  A week later he said good-bye to the young couple, on the deck of a steamship.

“Don’t forget us, Peter,” shouted Watts, after the fasts were cast off and the steamer was slowly moving into mid-stream.