one emancipated out of acquired prudishness into the Greek enjoyment of life.  Miss Tavish, who would not for the world have violated one of the social conventions of her set, longed, as many women do, for the sort of freedom and the sort of applause which belongs to women who succeed upon the stage.  Not that she would have forfeited her position by dancing at a theatre for money; but; within limits, she craved the excitement, the abandon, the 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.