Even in the lively conversation which followed he found time to think it strange that she had never seemed to him half so lovely in Suez; was it his over-sight? Maybe not, for in Suez she had never in life been half so happy. Mrs. Fair could see this with her eyes shut, and poor Barbara could see that she saw it by the way she shut her eyes. But John, of course, was blind enough, and presently concluded that the wonder of this crescent loveliness was the old, old wonder of the opening rose. Meanwhile the talk flowed on. "And by that time," said John, "you'd missed your connection. I might have guessed it. Now you'll take--but you've hardly got time----" No, Mrs. Fair was feeling rather travel weary; this was Saturday; they would pass Sunday here and start refreshed on Monday. In the crowded elevator, when March was gone, Barbara heard Mrs. Fair say to her husband, "You must know men here whom it would be good for him to see; why don't you offer to----" Mrs. Fair ceased and there was no response, except that Barbara said, behind her smiling lips, "It's because he's in bad hands, and still I have not warned him!" March did not see them again that day. In the evening, two men, friends, sitting in the hotel's rotunda, were conjecturing who yonder guest might be to whose inquiries the clerk was so promptly attentive. "He's a Southerner, that's plain; and a gentleman, that's just as certain." "Yes, if he were not both he would not be so perfectly at home in exactly the right clothes and yet look as if he had spent most of his life in swimming." "He hasn't got exactly the right overcoat; it's too light and thin." "No, but that's the crowning proof that he's a Southerner." It was John. They hearkened to the clerk. "He's just gone to the theatre, Mr. March, he and both ladies. He was asking for you. I think he wanted you to go." "I reckon not," said John, abstractedly, and in his fancy saw Miss Garnet explaining to her friends, with a restrained smile, that in Suez to join the church was to abjure the theatre. But another clerk spoke: "Mr. March, did you--here's a note for you." The clerk knew it was from Miss Garnet, and was chagrined to see John, after once reading it, dreamily tear it up and drop it to the floor. Still it increased his respect for the young millionaire--Mr. March, that is. It was as if he had lighted his cigar with a ten-dollar bill. John wrote his answer upstairs, taking a good deal of time and pains to give it an air of dash and haste, and accepting, with cordial thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Fair's cordial invitation to go with them (and Miss Garnet, writing at their request) next day to church. Which in its right time he did.