Twenty-four hours later Max was vexing his soul with the difficulty of transcending planes. There was so much of which he could have warned his master, now that he had got him back from Long Island; but there was neither speech nor language, neither symbol nor sign, to make human beings understand anything but the most primitive needs and concepts. Obedience! Disobedience! Hunger! Thirst! Sorrow! Joy! These sentiments could be put over from the dog plane to the human plane, but without shadings, subtleties, or any of the marvels of untuitive knowledge by which dogs could enlighten men if men had open faculties. To another dog, he could have flashed his information in an instant; whereas human beings could only seize ideas when they were beaten into them with verbal clubs. Edith and Bob voted Max a nuisance because, in his agony of impotence, he pranced restlessly about the bedroom, lashing his tail in one tempo and pointing his ears in another. Edith had come down from the Berkshires on hearing by wire that Bob was to leave next Monday for South America. She was seated now on the bed, her back against the footboard. "What I don’t quite see," she was saying, "is how you can be so sure." Bob looked at her as he stood taking the studs from the soft-bosomed evening shirt in his hand to transfer them to the clean one lying on the bed. "How can you be so sure about Ayling?" "Well, that’s a little different. Ernest speaks our language; he has our ways. Dad and mother make a fuss because he hasn’t a lot of money; but that means no more than if he didn’t wear a certain kind of hat. He’s our sort, just the same." "And I’m her sort. I can’t explain it to you, Edie, but she needs me." "How do you know she needs you? Has she ever admitted it?" "I haven’t asked her to admit it. I can see." "Yes, that’s all very fine, but—did it ever strike you, when Hubert’s been talking about her, that—" Bob made an inarticulate sound of scorn as he inserted the cuff links into a cuff. "Oh, Hubert’s a top-hole chap, all right; but my Lord!—Jennie wouldn’t look across the street at him." "But he might look across the street at Jennie; and with you so far away—" He smiled, with something like a wink. "Don’t you fret about that. She’s the kind of little woman to be true. You can’t mistake ’em." "We’ve known a good many men who have mistaken them." "You haven’t known my kind to make that sort of tumble. Love can be blind; but instinct can’t be. Edie, I believe so much in that girl that, if she was to play me false—But there—good Lord!—she couldn’t; so why talk about it any more? See here," he added. "If you’re going to change your dress, you’ll have to scuttle—and I must get into my waiter’s togs." ————