One evening that strikes into Carl's memories of those days of the _pays du tendre_ is the evening on which Phil Dunleavy insisted on celebrating a Yale baseball victory by taking them to dinner in the oak-room of the Ritz-Carlton, under whose alabaster lights, among the cosmopolites, they dined elaborately and smoked slim, imported cigarettes. The thin music of violins took them into the lonely gray groves of the Land of Wandering Tunes, till Phil began to talk, disclosing to them a devotion to beauty, a satirical sense of humor, and a final acceptance of Carl as his friend. A hundred other "parties" Carl planned, while dining alone at inferior restaurants. A hundred times he took a ten-cent dessert instead of an exciting fifteen-cent strawberry shortcake, to save money for those parties. (Out of such sordid thoughts of nickel coins is built a love enduring, and even tolerable before breakfast coffee.) Yet always to him their real life was in simple jaunts out of doors, arranged without considering other people. Her father seemed glad of that. He once said to Carl (giving him a cigar), "You children had better not let Aunt Emma know that you are enjoying yourselves as you want to! How is the automobile business going?" * * * * * It would be pleasant to relate that Carl was inspired by love to put so much of that celebrated American quality "punch" into his work that the Touricar was sweeping the market. Or to picture with quietly falling tears the pathos of his business failure at the time when he most needed money. As a matter of fact, the Touricar affairs were going as, in real life, most businesses go--just fairly well. A few cars were sold; there were prospects of other sales; the VanZile Corporation neither planned to drop the Touricar, nor elected our young hero vice-president of the corporation. * * * * *