Phil Gallatin rose and followed the ladies to the door and then returned, sank into a vacant chair and began smoking, thinking deeply of the new difficulty into which Nina Jaffray had plunged him. A small group of men remained, Larry Kane, William Worthington, Ogden Spencer, and Egerton Savage, who gathered at the end of the table around their host.
“Selected your 1913 model yet, Bibby?” Pennington asked with a laugh. “What is she to be this time? Inside control, of course, maximum flexibility, minimum friction——”
“Oh, forget it, Dick,” said Worthington, sulkily.
“No offense, you know. Down on your luck? Cheer up, old chap, you’ll be in love again presently. There are as many good fish in the sea——”
“I’m not fishing,” put in Bibby with some dignity.
“By George!” whispered Larry Kane, in awed tones, “I believe he’s got it again. Oh, Bibby, when you marry, Venus will go into sackcloth and ashes!”
“So will Bibby,” said Spencer. “Marriage isn’t his line at all. You know better than that, don’t you, Bibby. No demnition bow-wows on your Venusberg—what? You’ve got the secret. Love often and you’ll love longer. Aren’t I right, Bibby?”
“Oh, let Bibby alone,” sighed Savage. “He’s got the secret. I take my hat off to him. Every year he bathes in the Fountain of Youth, and like the chap in the book—what’s his name?—gazes at his rejuvenated reflection in the limpid pool of virgin eyes. Look at him! Forty-five, if he’s a day, and looks like a stage juvenile.”
Gallatin listened to the chatter with dull ears, smiling perfunctorily, not because he enjoyed this particular kind of humor, but because he did not choose to let his silence become conspicuous. And when the sounds from a piano were heard and the men rose to join the ladies, he had made a resolve to see Jane Loring alone before the evening was gone.