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him her "sheik." She had to be pried loose and dragged back to her seat by her flustered partner and the head waiter. This incident, coming as it did soon after Jock's introduction to Terrace Tavern, very nearly nipped his new career in the bud, so great was his horror and dismay.

And once in awhile—just once in awhile, when he knelt on the oval of polished floor in the flaming spotlight, or when he took his pay envelope from August Schultz, or when he contemplated himself attentively in the looking-glass—a small faint something stirred in him. And he thought of college, books, courses. Learning . . . "good Lord, was it for this?" . . . Thought, also, of the time when he had fancied himself a man marked for glory, he, who now strummed Blues for Yvonne to sing to, and asked no greater boon of Fortune!

But these flies in the ointment were few and far between, and the ointment was rich, plentiful, anaesthetic. Time lounged on. It was April, and the Hamills moved into New York. Yvonne, ever exciting, just around the corner. . . . It was May, and he agreed to play at Terrace Tavern through the summer, at least. It was June, and he made a quick trip to college, driving through one night to watch his class receive diplomas in the morning, starting back again at noon. He thought that some of the boys in their caps and gowns were "hot sketches," that it was an unconscionable lot of pother about nothing after all, and that Eunice, whom he spied at a distance, was getting much too fat. Aside from that, he felt nothing. . . . It was July, and his mother had gone to York Harbor. And Bones Allen, from Paris, was sending him characteristic postcards. "The French women are 'way overrated," said one of them tersely. "The French