servants. And he knew well how both of those two across the way, whom
he envied, blessed his name. It was a happiness to think of them, and
yet an impersonal happiness. He longed humanly for the other and more
direct kind.

Dauncey found cause for some anxiety in Jacob's demeanour during the
course of the next few weeks.

"You know, Jacob," he said, "in one way I never saw you look so well
in your life. That bronze you got in the south of France is most
becoming, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you seem to have gained
poise lately, to have lost that slight self-consciousness with which
you looked out upon life just at first. And yet you don't look as I'd
like to see you. I haven't even heard you laugh as you used to."

Jacob nodded.

"I'm all right, Dick," he assured his friend. "Fact is, I think I am
suffering from a surfeit of good things. Everything in the world's
lying ready to my hands, and I don't quite know which way to turn."

"Did you hear anything of Miss Bultiwell while you were abroad?"
Dauncey asked a little abruptly.

"Not a word," Jacob replied. "Her last letter to me seemed to end
things pretty effectually."

Dauncey spoke words under his breath which were real and blasphemous.

"Can't you put her out of your thoughts, old chap?"

"I think I have, and yet the place where she was is empty. And, Dick,"
Jacob went on, "I don't know where or how to fill it. You see, I've
crowds of acquaintances, but no friends except you and Nora. One or
two rich city people ask me to their houses, and the whole of Bohemia,
I suppose, is open to me. I never see any women belonging to my city
friends who appeal in the least to my imagination, and there's
something wrong about the other world, so far as I am concerned. We
are not out for the same thing."

"I think I understand," Dauncey said quietly.

"I expect you do," Jacob continued. "You ought to, because you're
exactly where I want to be. I want a wife who is just good and sweet
and affectionate. She needn't be clever, she needn't be well-born, and
she need know no more about Society than I do. I want her just to make
a home and give me children. And, Dick, with all that million of mine
I don't know where to look for her."

"She'll come," Dauncey declared encouragingly. "She is sure to come.
You are young and you'll keep young. You live like a man, of course,
but it's a sober, self-respecting life. You've heaps of time. And
that reminds me. Could you