“Yes, seventeen of us; all from Philadelphia.”

“And you’ve had a good time, of course?”

“We’d have had a better if we had brought a man along. I never realized before how valuable men are. Women aren’t fitted by nature to wrestle with time-tables and cabbies and hotel-bills and head-waiters. This trip has taught me to respect men more than I have ever done.”

“Then it hasn’t been wasted. But you say you’re from Philadelphia. I know some people in Philadelphia—the Courtlandt Bryces are sort of cousins of mine.”

But the girl shook her head.

“That sort of thing happens only in novels,” she said. “But there is no reason I shouldn’t tell you my name, if you want to know it. It is Millicent Field, and its possessor is very undistinguished—just a school-teacher—not at all in the same social circle as the Courtlandt Bryces.”

Stewart colored a little.

“My name is Bradford Stewart,” he said, “and I also am very undistinguished—just a surgeon on the staff at Johns Hopkins. Did you get to Vienna?”

“No; that was too far for us.”

“There was a clinic there; I saw some wonderful things. These German surgeons certainly know their business.”