THIS was still the most marked flavor in his self-consciousness the next morning, and when he rode to the wharf, when he entered the cabin decked with flowers as if for a funeral, even when they steamed out to sea, the bitter aftertaste of folly did not leave him. He was in the mid-Atlantic before his self-communings began to be mitigated by his sense of humor. Truly there had been no need to consider quite so nicely his duties to Miss Thomas. He had thought himself too far involved to retreat gracefully without a proposal. He had felt compelled to precipitate matters. He had feared to wound her deeply otherwise, though conscious, at the time, that his offer was rather magnanimous than passionate. He had had a continual fear of compromising her, too old-fashioned a reverence for woman, too European a sense of honor. He had done her too much honor. Apparently she had not considered him in so serious a light, this American. That he had been a most unconscionable ass Vane knew very well. This conviction, however, is a sentiment we can easily bear while it is unshared by others, and, fortunately, none of Vane's friends were so clearly convinced of it. None of his friends knew much about this affair. After all, he had almost given a sigh of relief when the welcome words of freedom came to her lips. He was well out of it. It had been a very sharp little skirmish, and he was not sorry that he had escaped in good order, heart and honor whole. At this point Vane again appeared to himself as an ass, but he only smiled at the apparition. Fortunate affairs those, which vanish with a laugh! So he dismissed the matter from his mind. When Vane landed at Havre the whole thing seemed like a dream. There was the familiar chalk cliff and the wide estuary, and the people seated on little, iron, painted chairs, in the cafés, reading _Figaro_, just as he had left them, with nothing changed but the date in the newspaper. A certain flippancy lurks in the sky of France, or was the flippancy _là-bas_ in America? Vane was not quite sure.