Young Mrs. Willing added: "Whatever became of the gay young thing with the eyelashes you flirted so outrageously with, the time we were up at Island Inn? What was his name--oh--Mr. Dalhousie?" Carlisle winced a little in spite of herself.... Banquo could not have been more impossible to forget than this. "Oh--why, he and I had the worst kind of smash-up--and he went away somewhere. I never like to think of him any more.... Let's fly!" Fly they did, that morning and many others. It was all very different from life at home. Born and bred in a town where social life is large, constant, and gay, Carlisle could not help being struck by the fact that the Willings, roughly speaking, had no friends. One other young couple in the same hotel, the Jennisons, appeared to be about the limit of their intimate circle: a phenomenon, no doubt at least partly explained by the fact that the Willings moved every year, or sometimes twice a year, "to get a change." Thus, in the huge rabbit-warren, they were constantly cutting themselves off from their past. "I can't endure to poke about in the same little spot year after year," said Florrie Willing. "If I don't have something new, I simply froth at the mouth and die." However, Mr. Willing of course had his connections downtown, and knowing his duty in the premises, he would frequently "bring up" men in the evening, brisk, lively, ambitious young fellows like himself. One of the men so brought up fell abruptly and deeply in love with Carlisle, which helped considerably to pass the time away. "You'd better hold on to Pierce," said Florrie, talking seriously as a married woman: "He's one of the coming men--dead certain to make a pile of money some day." Cally said she'd dearly love to hold on to Pierce, but to herself she smiled, thinking if Florrie only knew. By this time she had been a fortnight in New York, and had decided to leave at the end of another week. Whatever else the visit was or was not, it had more than justified itself by providing her with just the perspective she needed, to see things once again in their true proportions. Distance seemed wonderfully to soften away all the horridnesses. Nothing had really happened. On the contrary, against this stimulating background it was reassuringly plain that everything was agreeably settled at last, or very soon to be so settled. More and more, as April drew steadily nearer, Mr. Canning towered shiningly in the foreground of her thought.