WORLD'S END

She wasn't much interested in politics, and he didn't even bother to mention his resignation from the Crillon. What she wanted to hear about was the members of the British delegation he had met; she knew some of them, and had heard talk about others. She wanted the latest news about Nina and Rick and their common friends. She asked politely about Lanny's mother, and when he said that she was traveling in Spain, that sufficed; for the leisure class went traveling when the mood took them, and no other reason was required. Nor had she much curiosity about his visit to America - a remote and provincial place that people came from but didn't go to.

Most of all she wanted to know about Lanny himself; what was the state of his heart, and what was he planning to do with himself? He didn't tell her about Gracyn, being ashamed of it. When she asked the direct question whether he had fallen victim to the lures for which La Ville Lumiere was famous, he answered that he had lived a well-disciplined life, but had been sorely tempted by the charms of a stockbroker's daughter on the British staff.

"Poor darling Lanny!" said she. "He's going to be meat for some designing woman!" She was not to be persuaded that any man could ever see through the wiles of her sex.

The advice she gave him was the same as Nina's - to come and live in England. Rosemary, also, would like to find some "nice girl" to take care of him! "They can't fool us with their tricks, you know."

She had given him an opening, and he said: "Tell me - are you happy with your husband?"

"Oh, we get along," was the reply. "He's a very good boy - not vicious at all, only a bit soft." Her frank blue eyes met Lanny's. "He had a love affair, too."

"I see!" replied the youth. He had lived in France most of his life and wasn't naive; but all the same, he was in revolt against the property marriage. Perhaps it was because he had read so many novels and dramas - impractical inventions which attempted to maintain the rights of the heart over those of great estates and family fortunes! Few indeed among the heroines of these works had been able to take the complications of their sex life with the serenity of the future Countess of Sandhaven.

"Lanny, darling," said she, "I feel for you just what I used to; and maybe some day things will be so that we can be happy again. But don't be silly and try to wait for me. It may be a long time. Take things as they are and don't wear yourself out trying to change them all at once."

IV

Lanny went up to town early on Monday morning, and was waiting in the hotel lobby for his father. It amused him to sit in the same chair which he had occupied under the same circumstances almost exactly five years earlier. In that far-off time people had been wont to complain that life had become commonplace, that civilization had taken all the romance and excitement out of it. But very certainly Lanny hadn't found it so during those five years!

Robbie came in, looking prosperous and well cared for as always. His son gave him a hug and some pats on the back, and they went upstairs, and after Robbie had unpacked his whisky bottle and got his ice and soda, he said: "Now what the dickens is this about Beauty going to Spain?" Lanny had written cryptically, for he couldn't give any hint about Kurt in France, and he thought it better not to allude to a love affair which would require a lot of explaining.

Now he told the story, and Robbie sat astonished, forgetting his drink. The younger man wasn't at liberty to tell the part about Uncle Jesse and the money, even to his father; but he told about the duel with the Sыretй, and the father said: "Look here, kid, did all this happen, or did you dream it?" When Lanny began to picture Kurt's life in Beauty's apartment, Robbie exclaimed: "You left those two people shut up together for a week?"

So the "love interest" in the story didn't require as much explaining as the younger man had anticipated. Robbie knew his former mistress from top to toe, as he said, and he had never imagined that she could live without a man. "Even if she tried, the men wouldn't let her," said he.

What he was interested in was trying to guess the chances of her finding happiness in this oddest and most unexpected of liaisons. He had met Kurt only a few times, in London five years back; what had he turned into, and what could Beauty have to offer him, apart from the arts of love? Lanny, of course, defended his friend ardently, and read his father the brief letters which had come from his mother in Spain, indicating her perfect happiness. Robbie said: "Of course, if they can hit it off together, it's all right with me. But don't count on it for too many years."