ghost of a chance.”

“Women are the only judges,” Denby assured him seriously. “If I were you I’d bank on your friend Alice every time.”

“Then you’ll dine with me to-morrow?” Monty asked.

“Of course. You don’t suppose I am going to lose sight of you, do you?”

And Monty, grateful that this admired old school friend was so ready to join him, forgot the previous excuse about inability to spare the time.

“That’s fine,” he exclaimed. “But what are we going to do to-night?”

“You are going to dine with me,” Denby told him. “I haven’t seen you, let me see,” he reflected, “I haven’t seen you for about ten years and I want to talk over the old days. What do you say to trying some of Marguery’s sole à la Normandie?”

During the course of the dinner Monty talked frankly and freely about his past, present and future. Denby learned that in view of the great wealth which would devolve upon him, his father had determined that he should become grounded in finance. When he had finished, he reflected that while he had opened his soul to his old friend, his old friend had offered no explanation of what in truth brought him to Europe, or why he had for almost a decade dropped out of his old set.

“But what have you been doing?” Monty gathered courage to ask. “I’ve told you all about me and mine, Steve.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Denby responded slowly. “I left Groton because my father died. I’m afraid he wasn’t a shrewd man like your father, Monty. He was one of the last relics of New York’s brown-stone age and he tried to keep the pace when the marble age came in. He couldn’t do it.”

“You were going into the diplomatic service,” Monty reminded him. “You used to specialize in modern languages, I remember. I suppose you had to give that up.”

“I had to try to earn my own living,” Denby explained, “and diplomacy doesn’t pay much at first even if you have the luck to get an appointment.”

Monty looked at him shrewdly. He saw a tall, well set up man who had every appearance of affluence.

“You’ve done pretty well for yourself.”

Denby smiled, “The age demands that a man put up a good 

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