He glared at me, but as I met the glare unruffled, his lip presently twisted into a grin of desperate humor. His shoulders squared. "All right," said he, resignedly. And after an interval of dejected silence, he remarked: "I've sort of got a glimmer of how Madame feels about this. She generally knows what's what, Madame does, and I haven't seen her make a mistake yet. If she thinks it's my turn to come on in and take a hand in any game she's playing, why, I guess I'd better play up to her lead the best I know how ... and trust God to slip me over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she can depend on me not to fall down on her ... and Miss Eustis." "No need to tell Madame what she already knows." "Huh!" With his chin in his hand and his head bent, he stared out over the autumn garden with eyes which did not see its flaming flowers. Of a sudden his shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud. "What are you laughing at?" I was startled out of a revery of my own. "Everything," said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and stood up and shook himself. "And everybody. And me in particular. _Me!_ Oh, good Lord, think of _Me!_" He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I watched him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through a glass darkly, but face to face. My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished manuscript cookbook in her hand, looked after them thoughtfully: "Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper place!" "And does he not?" "Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man's way, though--not a woman's. It's the woman's way that really matters, you see. When women acknowledge that man socially--and I mean it to happen--his light won't be hidden under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his candlestick and shine." That sense of bewilderment which at times overwhelmed me when the case of John Flint pressed hard, overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As he himself had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Something too big to withstand. I was afraid to do anything, to say anything, for or against, this launching of his barque upon the social sea. I felt that the affair had been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving now was but to stand and wait.