He was plashing carelessly with his oars, and watching the sheen of moonlight on the outline of his companion's fair face, suffering himself for a moment to wonder how the same light would have fallen in Winifred's blue eyes, when Miss Gibbs again spoke of her. "I had a letter from your friend Miss Thomas, to-day," said she. The deuce she had! thought Vane; so she corresponds with Miss Gibbs, does she? Vane was disgusted with himself for thinking so much about the girl, and here he was caught thinking of her again. He pulled a few nervous strokes. How could he see the letter without exciting Miss Gibbs' curiosity? He managed it, finally, and read the letter. He was secretly relieved to find that the note was quite formal and was simply to tell Miss Gibbs that she need not forward a piece of embroidery which had been left behind. More surprising was the news that Miss Thomas was coming back. Vane made himself doubly attentive to Miss Gibbs; and as each man walked back with his lady, and said to her a long good night on the hotel piazza, implying all the sorrow of a Romeo in parting from a Juliet, Vane was secretly wondering what the deuce he was to do. "What the deuce!" was again the phrase he mentally used. He did not wish to see the girl again--that was certain enough; but it was decidedly undignified to run away. There was really a sort of fatality in their meeting. But the best way to treat a fatality is to make nothing of it. Thus treated, it is seldom fatal. Then he was rather curious to see how Miss Thomas would behave among these Dibbles and these Westerhouses. After all, she too was an American; a little more sophisticated, a little better endowed by nature; but she, too, made a toy of love, and actors in private theatricals of her more "exciting" friends. "Exciting" was a word that Vane had heard Miss Westerhouse apply to Mr. Dibble. Vane had caught a little of the Parisian's contempt for flirting with young girls. In a flirtation with married women, he thought, there were at least possibilities; and the flirtations were not so utterly silly. But marriage was far too serious an affair to be made fun of. At this period Vane affected to himself an extreme cynicism. Intercourse with Cinerea girls had corrupted him. They had given him their own levity. At another time, he would have deplored the vulgarization of a lofty sentiment; but since the past June he had been in a flippant mood himself. The American cue was to make game of everything in fun, and to make a hazard of life in earnest. He felt that he was becoming Americanized.