ng is not good.--Where was the point or
need?"

"I have no right to reply to that directly," I responded. "But this
man's life is not for always, and if anything happened to him it would
seem curious to strangers to find that on his breast--because, of
course, more than I would see it there."

"If anything happened? What should happen? You mean, on board ship?"
There was a little nervousness in her tone now.

"I am only hinting at an awkward possibility," I replied.

She looked at me scornfully. "When did you see that picture on his
breast?" I told her. "Ah! before THAT day?" she rejoined. I knew
that she referred to the evening when I had yielded foolishly to the
fascination of her presence. The blood swam hotly in my face. "Men are
not noble creatures," she continued.

"I am afraid you would not give many their patents of nobility if you
had power to bestow them," I answered.

"Most men at the beginning, and very often ever after, are ignoble
creatures. Yet I should confer the patents of nobility, if it were my
prerogative; for some would succeed in living up to them. Vanity would
accomplish that much. Vanity is the secret of noblesse oblige; not
radical virtue--since we are beginning to be bookish again."

"To what do you reduce honour and right?" returned I.

"As I said to you on a memorable occasion," she answered very drily, "to
a code."

"That is," rejoined I, "a man does a good action, lives an honourable
life, to satisfy a social canon--to gratify, say, a wife or mother, who
believes in him, and loves him?"

"Yes." She was watching Belle Treherne promenading with her father. She
drew my attention to it by a slight motion of the hand, but why I could
not tell.

"But might not a man fall by the same rule of vanity?" I urged. "That
he shall appear well in their eyes, that their vanity in turn should be
fed, might he not commit a crime, and so bring misery?"

"Yes, it is true either way--pleasure or misery. Please come to the
saloon and get me an ice before the next dance."

I was perplexed. Was she altogether soulless? Even now, as we passed
among the dancers, she replied to congratulations on her make-up and
appearance with evident pleasure.

An hour later, I was taking Belle Treherne from the arm of Hungerford
for the last waltz, and, in reply to an inquiring glance from him, I
shook my head mournfully. His face showed solicitude as he walked away.
Perhaps it did not gratify my vanity that Bell