Dan Blair had not been back of the scenes at the Gaiety since his first call on the singer. Indeed, though he had told the duchess he pitied Miss Lane, he had not been able to approach her very closely, even in his own thoughts. When she first appeared on his horizon his mind was full of the Duchess of Breakwater, and the singer had only hovered round his more profound feelings for another woman. But Letty Lane was an atmosphere in Dan’s mind which he was not yet able to understand. There was so little left that was connected with his old home, certainly nothing in the British Isles, excepting Ruggles, and to the young man everything from America had its value. Decidedly the nice girl of whom he had spoken to Gordon Galorey, the print-frocked, sun-bonneted type, the ideal girl that Dan would like to marry and to spoil, had not crossed his path. The Duchess of Breakwater did not suggest her, nor did any of the London beauties. Dan’s first ideal was beginning to fade. He left Osdene Park on protest and returned the same night to London, and all the way back to town tried to register in his mind, unused to analysis, his experience with the Duchess of Breakwater on this last visit. He had experienced his first disappointment in the sex, and this disappointment had been of an unusual kind. It was not that he had been turned down or given the mitten, but he had seen one woman turn another down. A woman had been mean, so he put it, and the fact that the Duchess of Breakwater had refused to lend a moral hand to the singer at the Gaiety hurt Dan’s feelings. Then, as soon as his enthusiasm had calmed, he saw what a stupid ass he had been. A duchess couldn’t mix up with a comic opera singer, of course. Still, he mused, “she might have been a little nicer about it.” The education his father had given him about women, the slender information he had about them, was put to the test now; the girl he had dreamed of, “the nice girl,” well, she would have had a tenderer way with her in a case such as this! Back of Dan’s hurt feelings, there was a great deal on the Duchess of Breakwater’s side. She had not done for herself yet. She hadn’t fetched him nearly up to the altar for nothing, and back of his disapproval, there was a long list of admirations and looks, memories of many tête-à-têtes and of more fervent kisses which scored a good deal in the favor of Dan’s first woman. The Duchess of Breakwater had gone boldly on with Dan’s unfinished education, and he really thought he loved her, and that he was in honor bound to see the thing through. * * * * *