It was a disheartening evening. We played progressive uchre for a silly prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay so. Then the major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I was thankful to sneak out-of-doors and smoke a cigar under the starlight. I walked up and down, consigning Jones to--well, where I thought he belonged. I thought of the time I had wasted over the fellow--the good money--the hopes--I was savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent. miserable it's hell not to reach par. I was sore all over, and I wanted the balm--the consolation--to be found in the company of those cold old stars, who had looked down in their time on such countless generations of human asses. It gave me a wonderful sense of fellowship with the past and future. I was reflecting on what an infinitesimal speck I was in the general scheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another human speck, stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit case. It was Jones himself, outward bound, and doing five knots an hour. I was after him in a second, doing six. "Jones!" I cried. He never even turned round. I grabbed him by the arm. He wasn't going to walk away from me like that. "Where are you going?" I demanded. "Home!" "But say, stop; you can't do that. It's too darned rude. We don't break up till to-morrow." "I'm breaking up now," he said. "But--" "Let go my arm--!" "Oh, but, my dear chap--" I began. "Don't you dear chap me!" We strode on in silence. Even his back looked sullen, and his face under the gaslights-- "Westoby," he broke out suddenly, "if there's one thing I'm sensitive about it is my name. Slap me in the face, turn the hose on me, rip the coat off my back--and you'd be astounded by my mildness. But when it comes to my name I--I'm a tiger!" "A tiger," I repeated encouragingly. "It all went swimmingly," he continued in a tone of angry confidence. "For five seconds I was the happiest man in the United States. I--I did everything you said, you know, and I was dumfounded at my own success. S-s-she loves me, Westoby." I gazed inquiringly at the dress-suit case. "We don't belong to any common Joneses. We're Connecticut Joneses. In fact, we're the only Joneses--and the name is as dear to me, as sacred, as I suppose that of Westoby is, perhaps, to you. And yet--and yet--do you know what she actually said to me? Said to me, holding my hand, and, and--that the only thing she didn't like about me was my _name_." I contrived to get out, "Good heavens!" with the proper astonishment. "I told her that Van Coort didn't strike me as being anything very extra." "Wouldn't it have been wiser to--?"