The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The common room (which is uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes.

Istra had gone up to her room to sleep, bidding Mr. Wrenn do likewise and avoid the wrong bunch at the Caravanserai; for besides the wrong bunch of Interesting People there were, she explained, a right bunch, of working artists. But he wanted to get some new clothes, to replace his rain-wrinkled ready-mades. He was tottering through the common room, wondering whether he could find a clothing-shop in Aengusmere, when a shrill gurgle from a wing-chair by the rough-brick fireplace halted him.

“Oh-h-h-h, Mister Wrenn; Mr. Wrenn!“ There sat Mrs. Stettinius, the poet-lady of Olympia’s rooms on Great James Street.

“Oh-h-h-h, Mr. Wrenn, you bad man, do come sit down and tell me all about your wonderful trek with Istra Nash. I just met dear Istra in the upper hall. Poor dear, she was so crumpled, but her hair was like a sunset over mountain peaks — you know, as Yeats says:

“A stormy sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships,

only of course this was her hair and not her lips — and she told me that you had tramped all the way from London. I’ve never heard of anything so romantic — or no, I won’t say ‘romantic’— I do agree with dear Olympia — isn’t she a mag_nificent woman — so fearless and progressive — didn’t you adore meeting her? — she is our modern Joan of Arc — such a noble figure — I do agree with her that romantic love is passe, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that regards varietism as exactly as romantic as monogamy. But — but — where was I? — I think your gipsying down from London was most exciting. Now do tell us all about it, Mr. Wrenn. First, I want you to meet Miss Saxonby and Mr. Gutch and dear Yilyena Dourschetsky and Mr. Howard Bancock Binch — of course you know his poetry.”

And then she drew a breath and flopped back into the wing-chair’s muffling depths.

During all this Mr. Wrenn had stood, frightened and unprotected and rain-wrinkled, before the gathering by the fireless fireplace, wondering how Mrs. Stettinius could get her nose so blue and yet so powdery. Despite her encouragement he gave no fuller account of the “gipsying” than, “Why — uh — we just tramped down,” till Russian–Jewish Yilyena rolled her ebony eyes at him and insisted, “Yez, you mus’ tale us about it.”

Now, Yilyena had a pretty neck, colored like a cigar of mild flavor, and a trick of smiling. She was accustomed to having men obey her. Mr. Wrenn stammered:

“Why — uh — we just walked, and we got caught in the rain. Say, Miss Nash was a wonder. She never peeped when she got soaked through — she just laughed and beat it like everything. And we saw a lot of quaint English places along the road — got away from all them tourists — trippers — you know.”

A perfectly strange person, a heavy old man with horn spectacles and a soft shirt, who had joined the group unbidden, cleared his throat and interrupted:

“Is it not a strange paradox that in traveling, the most observant of all pursuits, one should have to encounter the eternal bourgeoisie!”

From the Cockney Greek chorus about the unlighted fire:

“Yes!”

“Everywhere.”

“Uh —” began Mr. Gutch. He apparently had something to say. But the chorus went on:

“And just as swelteringly monogamic in Port Said as in Brum.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Mr. Wr-r-renn,” thrilled Mrs. Stettinius, the lady poet, “didn’t you notice that they were perfectly oblivious of all economic movements; that their observations never post-dated ruins?”

“I guess they wanted to make sure they were admirin’ the right things,” ventured Mr. Wrenn, with secret terror.

“Yes, that’s so,” came so approvingly from the Greek chorus that the personal pupil of Mittyford, Ph.D., made his first epigram:

“It isn’t so much what you like as what you don’t like that shows if you’re wise.”

“Yes,” they gurgled; and Mr. Wrenn, much pleased with himself, smiled au prince upon his new friends.

Mrs. Stettinius was getting into her stride for a few remarks upon the poetry of industrialism when Mr. Gutch, who had been “Uh —“ing for some moments, trying to get in his remark, winked with sly rudeness at Miss Saxonby and observed:

“I fancy romance isn’t quite dead yet, y’ know. Our friends here seem to have had quite a ro-mantic little journey.” Then he winked again.

“Say, what do you mean?” demanded Bill Wrenn, hot-eyed, fists clenched, but very quiet.

“Oh, I’m not blaming you and Miss Nash — quite the reverse!” tittered the Gutch person, wagging his head sagely.

Then Bill Wrenn, with his fist at Mr. Gutch’s nose, spoke his mind:

“Say, you white-faced unhealthy dirty-minded lump, I ain’t much of a fighter, but I’m going to muss you up so’s you can’t find your ears if you don’t apologize for those insinuations.”

“Oh, Mr. Wrenn —”

“He didn’t mean —”

“I didn’t mean —”

“He was just spoofing —”

“I was just spoofing —”

Bill Wrenn, watching the dramatization of himself as hero, was enjoying the drama. “You apologize, then?”

“Why certainly, Mr. Wrenn. Let me explain —”

“Oh, don’t explain,” snortled Miss Saxonby.

“Yes!” from Mr. Bancock Binch, “explanations are so conventional, old chap.”

Do you see them? — Mr. Wrenn, self-conscious and ready to turn into a blind belligerent Bill Wrenn at the first disrespect; the talkers sitting about and assassinating all the princes and proprieties and, poor things, taking Mr. Wrenn quite seriously because he had uncovered the great truth that the important thing in sight-seeing is not to see sights. He was most unhappy, Mr. Wrenn was, and wanted to be away from there. He darted as from a spring when he heard Istra’s voice, from the edge of the group, calling, “Come here a sec’, Billy.”

She was standing with a chair-back for support, tired but smiling.

“I can’t get to sleep yet. Don’t you want me to show you some of the buildings here?”

“Oh yes!”

“If Mrs. Stettinius can spare you!”

This by way of remarking on the fact that the female poet was staring volubly.

“G-g-g-g-g-g —” said Mrs. Stettinius, which seemed to imply perfect consent.

Istra took him to the belvedere on a little slope overlooking the lawns of Aengusmere, scattered with low bungalows and rose-gardens.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it? Perhaps one could be happy here — if one could kill all the people except the architect,” she mused.

“Oh, it is,” he glowed.

Standing there beside her, happiness enveloping them, looking across the marvelous sward, Bill Wrenn was at the climax of his comedy of triumph. Admitted to a world of lawns and bungalows and big studio windows, standing in a belvedere beside Istra Nash as her friend —

“Mouse dear,” she said, hesitatingly, “the reason why I wanted to have you come out here, why I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to tell you how ashamed I am for having been peevish, being petulant, last night. I’m so sorry, because you were very patient with me, you were very good to me. I don’t want you to think of me just as a crochety woman who didn’t appreciate you. You are very kind, and when I hear that you’re married to some nice girl I’ll be as happy as can be.”

“Oh, Istra,” he cried, grasping her arm, “I don’t want any girl in the world — I mean — oh, I just want to be let go ‘round with you when you’ll let me —”

“No, no, dear. You must have seen last night; that’s impossible. Please don’t argue about it now; I’m too tired. I just wanted to tell you I appreciated — And when you get back to America you won’t be any the worse for playing around with poor Istra because she told you about different things from what you’ve played with, about rearing children as individuals and painting in tempera and all those things? And — and I don’t want you to get too fond of me, because we’re — different. . . . But we have had an adventure, even if it was a little moist.” She paused; then, cheerily: “Well, I’m going to beat it back and try to sleep again. Good-by, Mouse dear. No, don’t come back to the Cara-advanced-serai. Play around and see the animiles. G’-by.”

He watched her straight swaying figure swing across the lawn and up the steps of the half-timbered inn. He watched her enter the door before he hastened to the shops which clustered about the railway- station, outside of the poetic preserves of the colony proper.

He noticed, as he went, that the men crossing the green were mostly clad in Norfolk jackets and knickers, so he purchased the first pair of unrespectable un-ankle-concealing trousers he had owned since small boyhood, and a jacket of rough serge, with a gaudy buckle on the belt. Also, he actually dared an orange tie!

He wanted something for Istra at dinner —“a s’prise,” he whispered under his breath, with fond babying. For the first time in his life he entered a florist’s shop. . . . Normally, you know, the poor of the city cannot afford flowers till they are dead, and then for but one day. . . . He came out with a bunch of orchids, and remembered the days when he had envied the people he had seen in florists’ shops actually buying flowers. When he was almost at the Caravanserai he wanted to go back and change the orchids for simpler flowers, roses or carnations, but he got himsel............