Looking discreetly about, Norman was suddenly confronted by the face of Josephine Burroughs, only two tables away.

Until their eyes squarely met he did not know she was there, or even in America.  Before he could make a beginning of glancing away, she gave him her sweetest smile and her friendliest bow.  And Dorothy, looking to see to whom he was speaking, was astonished to receive the same radiance of cordiality.  Norman was pleased at the way his wife dealt with the situation.  She returned both bow and smile in her own quiet, slightly reserved way of gentle dignity.

“Who was that, speaking?” asked she.

“Miss Burroughs.  You must remember her.”

He noted it as characteristic that she said, quite sincerely:  “Oh, so it is.  I didn’t remember her.  That is the girl you were engaged to.”

“Yes—­’the nice girl uptown,’” said he.

“I didn’t like her,” said Dorothy, with evident small interest in the subject.  “She was vain.”

“You mean you didn’t like her way of being vain,” suggested Norman.  “Everyone is vain; so, if we disliked for vanity we should dislike everyone.”

“Yes, it was her way.  And just now she spoke to us both, as if she were doing us a favor.”

“Gracious, it’s called,” said he.  “What of it?  It does us no harm and gives her about the only happiness she’s got.”

[Illustration:  “At Josephine’s right sat a handsome young foreigner.”]

Norman, without seeming to do so, noted the rest of the Burroughs party.  At Josephine’s right sat a handsome young foreigner, and it took small experience of the world to discover that he was paying court to her, and that she was pleased and flattered.  Norman asked the waiter who he was, and learned that he came from the waiter’s own province of France, was the Duc de Valdome.  At first glance Norman had thought him distinguished.  Afterward he discriminated.  There are several kinds or degrees of distinction.  There is distinction of race, of class, of family, of dress, of person.  As Frenchman, as aristocrat, as a scion of the ancient family of Valdome, as a specimen of tailoring and valeting, Miss Burroughs’s young man was distinguished.  But in his own proper person he was rather insignificant.  The others at the table were Americans.  Following Miss Burroughs’s cue, they sought an opportunity to speak friendlily to Norman—­and he gave it them.  His acknowledgment of those effusive salutations was polite but restrained.

“They are friends of yours?” said Dorothy.

“They were,” said he.  “And they may be again—­when they are friends of ours.”

“I’m not very good at making friends,” she warned him.  “I don’t like many people.”  This time her unconscious and profound egotism pleased him.  Evidently it did not occur to her that she should be eager to be friends with those people on any terms, that the only question was whether they would receive her.