Despite Bert Stanley’s crudities and carelessness and boisterousness, he had no mean capacity for friendship. He was fond of Kendall Ware with that sort of friendship which one so often finds in men of his character for others of finer fiber. He did not understand Kendall, nor did he try overly hard to understand him; it was enough that he liked him and rather admired him. Sometimes his attitude toward his friend was of humorous tolerance. He laughed to himself when Ken took some slight affair with gravity and seriousness. He thought Ken was a bit queer and moody. As for himself, he took things as they presented themselves and made the best of it, not inquiring into causes and not caring about results unless there was a possibility of their presenting themselves in too unpleasant fashion.

For instance, he had seen Kendall thrown into somber mood by a discussion of the unhappy future of hundreds of thousands of French girls deprived of men with whom to marry. Of course it did look a bit tough on the women, Bert thought, but what can you expect? And what could one do about it? He put this thought into words.

“Do about it?” Kendall replied, gloomily. “That’s the devil of it—there’s nothing that can be done about it. They’re just up against it.... Poor devils!”

“Oh, it’ll come out all right somehow,” Bert said, with a shrug. “They’ll find men somewhere.”

“Find men!... There aren’t any men. You can’t take a stick and whittle out men.”

“Then what in thunder is the use worrying about it? It’s so, and that’s all there is to it. No use getting gloomy.”

“But it makes me gloomy. It’s so rotten unfair. It’s horrible. Just think of what it means to them!...”

“Just don’t think about it and you’ll be better off.”

It was this sort of thing that Bert failed to understand. He could imagine a man worrying because he was out of a job, or because he had broken his leg, or because his house was on fire; but why anybody should go out of his way to fuss over something that seemed to him like a rather distant abstraction, he failed to comprehend. But Ken always did it.

Bert could never understand the effect of the sight of Paris on his friend. Of course it was a regular city, different from New York and Chicago, but there was no use to rave about it or to stand on a bridge mooning and looking at a row of buildings. Paris meant a good time of an exotic sort to Bert—and that was all. He was willing to agree that the town was beautiful if anybody insisted, but what was the use of insisting? A town was a town. It wasn’t what a town looked like that made it a good place to be; it was the business opportunities of the town and the opportunities for pleasure when business was over for the day. He went with Kendall to see Notre Dame, and wondered why in the dickens anybody had ever gone to the trouble to hew all those ugly carvings out of stone, or why they should run fringes of them around a church. It was a sort of dingy old place, anyhow.... Now for a regular building, give him the H?tel de Ville. That was something like, because it might have been the post-office or a railroad station in New York. He would have traded his chance to see all the ramshackle cathedrals in France for one sight of the Woolworth Building. Now there was something! There was some use in going to see that structure! It was capable of astonishing him—but only because it was so lofty. To see it of a spring morning with the hazy sun tipping its golden peak meant nothing to him except looking at a tall building early in the day.... There wasn’t a high building in Paris! But Ken wanted to poke around to see such things as Notre Dame, and if he got pleasure out of it, that was his business.

Nevertheless, Bert saw dimly that Kendall had something admirable which was denied to him. Not that he wanted it especially! He was very well satisfied, but somehow he admired Ken for having it and liked him the better for it.... And Ken was always philosophizing about things, and advancing theories, and worrying about morals, and splitting hairs of right and wrong. To Bert certain things were wrong, and the rest didn’t matter. It was wrong to murder and to steal or to kick a child or to cheat at cards or in any other game. As for the bulk of the rest of the possible acts of man, he saw them as neuter, and not mattering much.... But Ken could get up a moral argument over the way he spread his bread! And these arguments had the power to upset his friend completely, to make him gloomy, to worry him.... It was utter nonsense, but it was a part of Ken and Ken was his friend.

He felt a sort of duty to look after Ken, a responsibility for him. He was actually troubled sometimes by one of Ken’s moods and deliberately thought up means to cheer him.... And now he was really worried. He had never seen Kendall as he had appeared last night. Something out of the ordinary had happened. Most likely it was nothing that the ordinary fellow would think twice about, but the Lord only knew how it would affect Ken. Anyhow, Ken thought he was in some sort of trouble, and Bert was really disturbed. He had wanted to do something about it last night, but Madeleine had prevented, and now he felt rather guilty. Putting on his bathrobe and slippers, he went to Ken’s door and opened it softly. Ken was sitting up in bed, staring out of the window.

“Morning,” said Bert, affably.

“Morning,” replied Kendall, shortly.

“Um!... Cheerful, ain’t you? Say, what’s eating you, anyhow?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing, my aunt’s knee-cap! Come through. What’s carried off your goat?”

Kendall did not reply.

“Get up and have breakfast. I hear Arlette in the kitchen. You’ll feel better after you’ve had a bowl of chocolate warming up your tummy.”

“I don’t want any breakfast.”

“Huh?...” Bert was beginning now to be seriously troubled. “Say, what’s the matter, anyhow? Is it Andree?”

“I’ve just been a damn fool, that’s all.”

“Ought to be used to it,” said Bert, flippantly, and then, more seriously, “Say, you don’t mean to say that you’ve gone and went and fallen in love with her, or anything like that?”

“Look here,” Ken said, morosely, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I do,” said Bert, with a grin, “so we’re going to talk. I’m the biggest, and I can doggone well hold you while we thrash it out. Now tell it to your uncle. Are you in love with Andree?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“That means you are.... What about it? Say, you don’t mean you’re worrying about marrying her, do you?”

Ken laughed unpleasantly. “I wouldn’t marry her if she was the last woman on earth. I never want to see her again. I never want to think about her again.”

“Huh! Had a row, eh?”

“No.”

Bert glowered at his friend a minute. “I don’t know whether you are interested or not, but you give me an acute pain. Why in blazes can’t you go along and have a good time like a fellow ought to without always landing into the middle of something that fusses you all up? You think too darn much.... Now there’s Madeleine and I—you don’t see me doing any worrying or scrapping, do you? Well!... Nor falling in love. You bet you don’t! When I fall in love it will be with some American girl, and then I’ll settle down and raise a family and wear slippers in the evening. But now I’m out to have what fun is going before I get my style cramped. I like Madeleine and she likes me.... That’s all. I’m giving her a good time, and she’s a good fellow—but that’s all there is to it. She knows it and I know it, and there you are. I saw to that right at the start-off. I told her. You bet I did! I said to her, ‘Now look here, young lady, we’re just playing, understand. There’s nothing serious about this. I’m going back to America some day, and when I do, it’s good-by.’ And she feels the same way about it.... And that’s the only system.”

Arlette came shuffling into the room after Kendall’s shoes and responded to Bert’s greeting with a grin and a bob of her head.

“Arlette,” said Bert, “Monsieur Ken’s in love. You’ve had experience, eh? What’s to be done about it?”

“Eh?... In love!... Mon Dieu! What does one do about it? One makes nothing. Either one is in love or one is not.... I have been in love.” She wagged her head sagely.

“I knew it. I could tell it just by looking at you. What did you do?”

“I married ... and now I have grandchildren, and love is no more for me.... But I remember it, messieurs.... Yes, yes, I often think of it. Is that not droll?” Again she waggled her head.

“But Monsieur Ken is in love and he doesn’t seem to like it.”

“It happens so,” she said. “There is both joy and sorrow. But monsieur is loved in return. I have perceived it. Why, then, is he not joyous?”

“You tell the answer. I don’t know.”

“He loves Mademoiselle Andree; Mademoiselle Andree loves him. She is very pretty, very sweet.... Well, then?” She made a gesture with her arms as if to say that the thing was beyond human comprehension.

“All the Americans are mad,” said Bert in French, employing the phrase of the streets.

“It is true,” said Arlette, nodding. “I have seen it.”

“And when they are in love they are madder than ever.”

“It may well be believed.”

“Oh, get out and leave me alone, both of you,” Ken said, morosely.

“Nothing of the sort. Explain carefully the difficulty to Arlette and me. We are the council of experts.”

“It’s nothing—except that I was a fool to get mixed up in this kind of a thing. It’s rotten.”

“It’s his conscience, Arlette,” said Bert, with mock impressiveness.

“When the conscience makes to interfere in a matter of love,” said Arlette, “it means either that one is not in love at all or that one is jealous. Love, messieurs, is its own conscience.”

“Madeleine said you were jealous last night. Two experts agree.... Jealous! Um!...”

“I’m not jealous, you gibbering idiot. I—It’s just that I thought Andree was something and find she’s not.... It’s the whole idea over here. I thought it was right—and it’s rotten. I was losing my balance. I thought wrong could be right.”

“It never can be when the other fellow does it,” said Bert, with more acuteness than usual. “Then you’re not worrying about marrying Andree? And you have discovered that you’re being very wicked, and so you’re in the dumps, and you’re figuring on calling the whole thing off and living a noble and austere life. Huh!... What happened last night? You can’t fool your uncle. You got a letter from home, and then something happened. What was it?”

“I saw Andree with that actor.”

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Arlette, and she passed off, as though frightened, to her kitchen.

“You saw them together? Where?”

“In a café?”

“Yes—go on.”

“That’s all.”

“And you—Oh, say—all this cat-fit is because you saw Andree in a café with another man! Get out!”

“With that particular man. You know what Jacques said about him.... You know Andree wants to get into the Conservatoire and on the stage. I introduced them—”

“More fool you,” said Bert, succinctly.

“It was plain enough. She could use him. She needed his influence—so—Oh, what’s the use? I don’t want to talk about it.”

Bert thought that Ken’s view was altogether likely. And why not? But he conceived it to be his duty to argue against it in his friend’s interest. “Just a case of plain, or garden, jealousy. Nothing to it. You see them together in a café and jump to conclusions. Didn’t hang around to see where they went?”

“Certainly not.”

“Made up your mind with a snap—and then, because you were jealous, and it looked as if your nose was out of joint, you hollered sour grapes. In a second it all got to be immoral and naughty—and you’re worked up to a state of mind.... If this actor had never come along, and if Andree had loved you alone and all that, would it have been wrong?... Of course not, and you know it.”

Ken did not reply, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Bert was right.

“You’d better give her a chance to explain—or did you burst in on the party and rear and tear all over the place?”

“They never knew I saw them.”

“Then, old son, you’d better let Andree tell you about it. Madeleine says she loves you and Arlette says she loves you—and, believe me, they’re experts.”

“If she loves me, and then would do such a thing, it’s all the worse.... I’ll never see her again.”

“Well, if your mind’s made up, there’s the end of the whole thing. Get up and eat and forget it.... The river’s full of fish.”

“You don’t think I’d try it again. Never!... I’ve been a fool, and a rotten fool.... I fooled myself into thinking one could do this kind of thing and not be wrong. I got it into my head that our ideas of morals in America were old-fashioned and narrow and absurd, and that the French were right.”

“Of course you’d have to philosophize about it.”

“Well, I’m through now. I&rs............