to him as 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 w