time to make the trip abroad, and Dudley, with two years' war experience with France and its language, was free to tackle the job if he cared to. Dudley fairly leaped for joy. He sailed within five days.
In Paris young Drake met first an unexpected snarl of business complications, and then he met Carmelita and the Duval negotiations didn't seem very important after all. He admitted his laxness now. He had missed appointments, let people get out of town whom he should have caught and interviewed, fallen down on the job. He couldn't blame Carmelita; she hadn't known anything about the workaday side of his life, didn't yet. If he had been clever, he could have managed both. He was a fool. But was he? He had won Carmelita—and she was more precious than all the Duvals and Drakes and jobs in the world. But as far as his business career went—this cablegram—it was certainly a rebuke, the notification that he had failed, possibly dismissal.
Nevertheless he tried to turn cheerfully to Carmelita and then saw, to his misgiving, that her cablegram must have contained bad news also, for her face bore a surprised, hurt expression.
Alarmed, he put his hand upon her shoulder reassuringly.
