my pleasure in music would make me lose my pleasure in
everything else? Suppose I met and married a girl at
twenty-five. Is that going to make me forget all the women I
knew before I met her? I think not. As a matter of fact, I
really deserve a great deal of credit for remaining single,
for I am naturally very affectionate; but when I see what poor
husbands my friends make, I prefer to stay as I am until I am
sure that I will make a better one. It is only fair to the
woman."

Carlton was sitting in the club alone. He had that sense of
superiority over his fellows and of irresponsibility to the
world about him that comes to a man when he knows that his
trunks are being packed and that his state-room is engaged.
He was leaving New York long before most of his friends could
get away. He did not know just where he was going, and
preferred not to know. He wished to have a complete holiday,
and to see Europe as an idle tourist, and not as an artist
with an eye to his own improvement. He had plenty of time and
money; he was sure to run across friends in the big cities,
and acquaintances he could make or not, as he pleased, en
route. He was not sorry to go. His going would serve to put
an end to what gossip there might be of his engagement to
numerous young women whose admiration for him as an artist, he
was beginning to fear, had taken on a more personal tinge. "I
wish," he said, gloomily, "I didn't like people so well. It
seems to cause them and me such a lot of trouble."

He sighed, and stretched out his hand for a copy of one of the
English illustrated papers. It had a fresher interest to him