“What is it?” called one smoker to another.  “Moving Day in Jungle Town?”

“Ha!  Ha!  Ha!” tittered the whole line of smokers.  “Ha!—­Ha!  Ha!  Ha!—­Ha!”

So, because he belonged, not so much to the type of person that can’t stand having its friends laughed at, as to the type that can’t stand having friends who are liable to be laughed at, Barton changed his mind quite precipitately about identifying himself at that particular moment with the Edgarton family, and whirled back instead to the writing-room.  There, by the aid of the hotel clerk, and two bell-boys, and three new blotters, and a different pen, and an entirely fresh bottle of ink, and just exactly the right-sized, the right-tinted sort of letter paper, he concocted a perfectly charming note to little Eve Edgarton—­a note full of compliment, of gratitude, of sincere appreciation, a note reiterating even once more his persistent intention of rendering her somewhere, sometime, a really significant service!

Whereupon, thus duly relieved of his truly honest effort at self-expression, he went back again to his own kind—­to the prattling, the well-groomed, the ultra-fashionables of both mind and body.  And there on the shining tennis-courts and the soft golf greens, through the late yellow afternoon and the first gray threat of twilight, the old sickening ennui came creeping back to his senses, warring chaotically there with the natural nervous reaction of his recent adventure, till just out of sheer morbid unrest, as soon as the flower-scented, candle-lighted dinner hour was over, he went stalking round and round the interminable piazzas, hunting in every dark corner for Mr. Edgarton and his daughter.

Meeting them abruptly at last in the full glare of the office, he clutched fatuously at Mr. Edgarton’s reluctant attention with some quick question about the extraordinary moonlight, and stood by, grinning like any bashful schoolboy, while Mr. Edgarton explained to him severely, as if it were his fault, just why and to what extent the radii of mountain moonlight differed from the radii of any other kind of moonlight, and Eve herself, in absolute spiritual remoteness, stood patiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other, staring abstractedly all the time at the floor under her feet.

Right into the midst of this instructive discourse broke one of Barton’s men friends with a sharp jog of his elbow, and a brief, apologetic nod to the Edgartons.

“Oh, I say, Barton!” cried the newcomer, breathlessly.  “That wedding, you know, over across at the Kentons’ to-night, with the Viennese orchestra—­and Heaven knows what from New York?  Well, we’ve shanghaied the whole business for a dance here to-morrow night!  Music!  Flowers!  Palms!  Catering!  Everything!  It’s going to be the biggest little dancing party that this slice of North American scenery ever saw!  And—­”

Slowly little Eve Edgarton lifted her great solemn eyes to the newcomer’s face.