She was looking at him, furtively, taking advantage of the fact that his face was turned away and his eyes fixed on the broad, swallow-tailed back of Mr. Ben Baermann. It was odd, she felt, all very odd. If she had been asked to describe the sort of man whom one of these days she hoped to marry, the description, curiously enough, would not have been at all unlike dear old Johnnie. He had the right clean, fit look--she knew she could never give a thought to anything but an outdoor man--and the straightness and honesty and kindliness which she had come, after moving for some years in a world where they were rare, to look upon as the highest of masculine qualities. Nobody could have been farther than John from the little, black-moustached dancing-man type which was her particular aversion, and yet ... well, the idea of becoming his wife was just simply too absurd and that was all there was to it. But why? What, then, was wrong with Johnnie? Simply, she felt, the fact that he was Johnnie. Marriage, as she had always envisaged it, was an adventure. Poor cosy, solid old Johnnie would have to display quite another side of himself, if such a side existed, before she could regard it as an adventure to marry him. "That man," said John, indicating Mr. Baermann, "looks like a Jewish black beetle." Pat was relieved. If by this remark he was indicating that he wished the recent episode to be taken as concluded, she was very willing to oblige him. "Doesn't he?" she said. "I don't know where they can have dug him up from. The last time I was here, a year ago, they had another band, a much better one. I think this place has gone down. I don't like the look of some of these people. What do you think of Hugo's friends?" "They seem all right." John cast a moody eye at Miss Molloy, a prismatic vision seen fitfully through the crowd. She was laughing, and showing in the process teeth of a flashing whiteness. "The girl's the prettiest girl I've seen for a long time." Pat gave an imperceptible start. She was suddenly aware of a feeling which was remarkably like uneasiness. It lurked at the back of her consciousness like a small formless cloud. "Oh!" she said. Yes, the feeling was uneasiness. Any other man who at such a moment had said those words she would have suspected of a desire to pique her, to stir her interest by a rather obviously assumed admiration of another. But not John. He was much too honest. If Johnnie said a thing, he meant it.