It was a disheartening evening.  We played progressive euchre for a silly prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay so.  Then the major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died.  I was thankful to sneak out-of-doors and smoke a cigar under the starlight.  I walked up and down, consigning Jones to—­well, where I thought he belonged.  I thought of the time I had wasted over the fellow—­the good money—­the hopes—­I was savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge gate.  There are moments when a man is better left alone.  Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to pile on the agony.  When you’re eighty-eight per cent miserable it’s hell not to reach par.  I was sore all over, and I wanted the balm—­the consolation—­to be found in the company of those cold old stars, who have looked down in their time on such countless generations of human asses.  It gave me a wonderful sense of fellowship with the past and future.

I was reflecting on what an infinitesimal speck I was in the general scheme of things, when I heard the footfall of another human speck, stumbling through the dark and carrying a dress-suit case.  It was Jones himself, outward bound, and doing five knots an hour.  I was after him in a second, doing six.

“Jones!” I cried.

He never even turned round.

I grabbed him by the arm.  He wasn’t going to walk away from me like that.

“Where are you going?” I demanded.

“Home!”

“But say, stop; you can’t do that.  It’s too darned rude.  We don’t break up till tomorrow.”

“I’m breaking up now,” he said.

“Bu—­”

“Let go my arm—!”

Oh, but, my dear chap—­“I began.

“Don’t you dear chap me!”

We strode on in silence.  Even his back looked sullen, and his face under the gaslights.

“Westoby,” he broke out suddenly, “if there’s one thing I’m sensitive about it is my name.  Slap me in the face, turn the hose on me, rip the coat off my back—­and you’d be astounded by my mildness.  But when it comes to my name I—­I’m a tiger!”

“A tiger,” I repeated encouragingly.

“It all went swimmingly,” he continued in a tone of angry confidence.  “For five seconds I was the happiest man in the United States.  I—­I did everything you said, you know, and I was dumfounded at my own success.  S-s-she loves me, Westoby.”

I gazed inquiringly at the dress-suit case.

“We don’t belong to any common Joneses.  We’re Connecticut Joneses.  In fact, we’re the only Joneses—­and the name is as dear to me, as sacred, as I suppose that of Westoby is, perhaps, to you.  And yet—­and yet do you know what she actually said to me?  Said to me, holding my hand, and, and that the only thing she didn’t like about me was my name.”