Sometimes I feel it is just a queer,
indistinct, but passionate appreciation of the abstract beauty of the
life he seems to stand for."

"Is he really so good, I wonder?" Sophy asked pensively.

"I do not know," Louise sighed. "I only know that when I first talked to
him, he seemed different from any man I have ever spoken with in my
life. I suppose there are few temptations up there, and they keep nearer
to the big things. Sometimes I wonder, Sophy, if it was not very wrong
of me to draw him away from it all!"

"Rubbish!" Sophy declared. "If he is good, he can prove it and know it
here. He will come to know the truth about himself. Besides, it isn't
everything to possess the standard virtues. Louise, he will be here in a
minute. You want to be left alone with him. What are you going to say
when he asks you what you know he will ask you?"

Louise looked down at her.

"Dear," she said, "I wish I could tell you. I do not know. That is the
strange, troublesome part of it--I do not know!"

"Will you promise me something?" Sophy begged. "Promise me that if I
stay in here quietly until after he has gone, you will come and tell
me!"

Louise leaned a little downward as if to look into her friend's face.
Sophy suddenly dropped her eyes, and the color rose to the roots of her
hair. There was a knock at the door, and the parlor maid entered.

"Mr. Strangewey, madam," she announced.

XIX

"There can be no possible doubt," Louise remarked, as she unfolded her
napkin, "as to our first subject of conversation. Both Sophy and I are
simply dying of curiosity to know about the prince's supper party."

"It was very cheerful and very gay," John said. "Every one seemed to
enjoy it very much."

"Oh, la, la!" Sophy exclaimed. "Is that all you have to tell us? I shall
begin to think that you were up to mischief there."

"I believe," Louise declared, "that every one of the guests is sworn to
secrecy as to what really goes on."

"I can assure you that I wasn't," John told them.

"The papers hint at all sorts of things," Sophy continued. "Every one
who writes for the penny illustrated papers parades his whole stock of
classical knowledge when he attempts to describe them. We read of the
feasts of Lucullus and Bacchanalian orgies. They say that at supper-time
you lie about on sofas and feast for four hours at a stretch."

"The reports seem exaggerated," John laughed. "We went in to suppe