She would have liked to sample the box of candy--a parting tribute from a family friend who had a most discriminating taste in chocolates--but she feared that it would place her hopelessly in the class of school-girls, from which she had just emerged, as world-wise, as sophisticated, as completely finished a young person as ever a convent turned loose upon the unsuspecting world. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" was her favorite novel; she had smoked her maiden cigarette--in fact, two of them; and she no longer subscribed to the stork-and-baby myth, which seemed to her puerile. She was still able, however, to savor keenly in advance the moment when the Pullman would empty itself into the dining-car and she would be free to approach her chocolates in the manner favored by true _bon vivants_: i.e., by nibbling off one end, extracting the contents bit by creamy bit with the head of a pin (preferably a large white-topped pin), and finally crushing the emptied shell deliciously upon the tongue. Conserved in this manner, one chocolate might be made to do the duty of many chocolates, an advantage not to be despised where pocket-money is limited to twenty-five cents a week. The moment was not yet, and reflecting sedately that self-control is good exercise for the character, she gave herself over to the pleasures of recollection. What a beautiful parting it had been! What floods of tears and kisses and promises! Seven--no, eight--girls weeping around her while they exchanged dramatic farewells; firm Sister Mary Joseph, the out-sister who conveyed pupils to shops and trains and so forth, leading her aside at the last moment to press upon her, heretic though she was, a tiny medal of St. Joseph, known to bring good husbands to his adherents; two youths from the near-by college (mere brothers of friends, but still masculine); and, for _pièce de résistance_, Stefan Nikolai, famous though elderly, who had run over from China or Egypt or somewhere to see her graduate. This was an attention Joan took quite for granted--he had been a friend of her mother's, and distance seemed nothing to his habit of life. But its effect upon her schoolmates, and even upon Sister Mary Joseph, was gratifying in the extreme. With his dark, fine features, and his foreign-cut clothes, he had not looked particularly elderly that day. His eyes, Joan recalled, had always been peculiarly expressive, like the eyes of a setter dog, which probably has nothing to express at all; and she chuckled to recall how the out-sister's gaze had wandered inadvertently toward the unconscious gentleman as she tendered her medal of St. Joseph.