talked, his pen was not ready, and he was conscious of a conspicuous
lack of imagination. To be sure, one does not need much in these
days of realistic fervor; it is considered rather a coarse and
old-fashioned article; but that one needs some sort of a plot is
indisputable, and Dartmouth's brain had consistently refused to evolve
one. Doubtless he could cultivate the mere habit of writing,
and achieve reputation as an essayist. His critical faculty was
pronounced, and he had carefully developed it; and it was possible
that when the world had completely palled upon him, he would shut
himself up at Crumford Hall and give the public the benefit of his
accumulated opinions, abstract and biographical. But he was not ready
for that yet; he needed several years more of experience, observation,
and assiduous cultivation of the habit of analysis; and in the
meantime he was in a condition of cold disgust with himself and with
Fate. It may also have been gathered that Mr. Dartmouth was a young
man of decidedly reckless proclivities. It is quite true that he never
troubled himself about any question of morals or social ethics; he
simply calculated the mathematical amount of happiness possible to the
individual. That was all there was in life. Had he lived a generation
or two earlier, he would have pursued his way along the paths of the
prohibited without introspective analysis; but being the intellectual
young man of the latter decades of the 19th century, it amused him
to season his defiance of certain conventional codes with the salt of
philosophy.

Miss Penrhyn reached the Legation a few moments after Dartmouth's
arrival, and he watched her as she entered the ballroom. She wore
a simple white gown, embroidered about the corsage with silver
crescents; and her richly-tinted brown hair was coiled about her head
and held in place by a crescent-shaped comb. She was a tall, slim,