the man in the moon

concerning the quest of a languorous lady who thought herself a prize well worth waiting for

Carola, a languishing young lady on Park Avenue, half closed her eyes and regarded her reflection, faintly outlined in the threesided mirror in front of her. With her eyes partially closed like this, she could see only two blurred points of her face—the peak of her chin and the impertinent point of her nose. Carola smiled. She enjoyed this game.

"Ma foi," she said to her mirror, "I wonder if, this time, I am really going to be happy?"

Her maid was tenderly brushing Carola's hair, which hardly had the properties of hair at all, but rather of perverse tendrils of thin gold, stretched taut and sprung back on themselves. The maid glanced at the image reflected in the mirror below her. Such, remarks on the part of Mademoiselle were, to say the least, rare. They were also propitious. Translated, they implied the advent of a new admirer.

As her old admirers waned in interest, Carola became a tragical figure. Her greengold eyes darkened behind mists of melancholy. Her exquisite, transparent hands moved in fluttering ways of futility. Her body seemed drawn toward an abyss of despair: despair, because she felt herself a victim of'the unending sameness of Man.

Frequently a new lover would appear, to occasion a turbulent well of hope to bubble up in Carola's breast, a hope that here, deo volente, was a man who would baffle her, charm her, dazzle her with his steely satire: in short, one who would envelop her in the indecipherable enigma of himself.

But one after another they proved themselves failures Russian princes, bronzed young golf players, Italian marchesi, fatigued menabout town; the old ritual was enacted with precise exactness. There was always a wellcontrolled but perceptible widening of their eyes at first sight of her. Then followed a few casual phrases. Then, in the course of time, an invitation to tea at the apartment of the gentleman in question. To this point, all was as well-oiled as the wheels of a highly perfected machine. But, on Carola's arrival at the apartment, at sight of Berta (her duenna and onetime governess without whom she never roamed far afield) there was another well-controlled but perceptible widening of the eyes, this time a widening not quite so favourable; a slightly increased indifference toward her, and, finally, a gentle aside after the tea was over—"Need the duenna come next time? Mayn't we ever have dinner alone?" But Carola never permitted a next time for her admirers were, one and all, a little dull, a little repetitious, a little banal.

But on this morning, her reflection in the carved mirror was completely metamorphosed. A hope had changed her, a new challenge. Yesterday she had met Harrison Studds!

As yet she knew very little about him; the acquaintance was pitifully young. He had taken tea at the house of her dear friend—the Contessa Bianca on Sutton Place—and had proved an unfathomable enigma among the obvious bores who comprised the rest of the Contessa's circle.

When she first saw Harrison Studds he was standing silhouetted against the long French window of the Contessa's drawing room. He was gravely contemplating the East River as the paling sun shot streaming banners in pied patterns of colour on the waters that shimmered between the softened edges of an army of great buildings. Then Harrison Studds looked up and saw Carola as she stood in the doorway. And here let it be said that it was characteristic of him that he did not turn quickly to look at her but merely slightly diverted his gaze from the distant enchantment of the river to that of Carola in the doorway. Having found her quite to his liking, he sighed vaguely and once more turned his attention to the far-away river. Carola paused, her habitually shattered look forgotten for a moment. Then she approached the Contessa.

"Dearest Nathalia," she said, her pale hands outstretched, her eyes delicately misted, "how charming you are to-day."

The Contessa kissed her with tenderness, and it so happened that at that precise moment Harrison Studds turned languidly from the French window. He noted the not too emotional episode with apparent indifference.

Then he moved in the direction of the Contessa and with great deliberation folded his long, lean body into the depths of the armchair beside her.

"My dear Nathalia," he whispered. "May I be permitted to ask the name of the young enchantress?"

Much to her displeasure, Carola found that, to her eyes, Mr. Studds had become a magnet of inescapable power. The thin, intense circles of deepening grey that were his eyes were fixed on the glow of a cigarette which he held between his narrow, nervous fingers. He said nothing: looked at no one.

Then, as though he had reached a longcontemplated decision, he rose to go. In passing, he stopped at Carola's side.

"You are the most beautiful woman in a world full of beautiful women," he said. "I shall come for you at four o'clock, tomorrow. You will come to my rooms for tea."

This was merely the usual gambit, the inevitable Figure A, the first paragraph of an endlessly repeated story. And Carola could not quite account for the little dart of pleasure that quivered through her body.

And so it was that, as we have seen, Carola, on that tomorrow morning looked into her three-sided mirror and mused pleasantly in the mellowest of mellow moods. Existence for her had become quite a delightful affair.

Then suddenly, a terror seized her. Her heart beat against her side. What if Harrison Studds should be like all the others—a failure, a bore, a man with only the thinnest veneer of charm?

When they had entered his living room she looked neither to the right nor to the left, but hurried to a large table in the center of the room and glanced hastily over it. A not quite suppressed cry of pleasure escaped her.

"You may go," she said quietly to Berta. "Tell my mother that I shan't be home for dinner. And Berta," she added, "tell her that I think I've found a husband."

On the table Carola had seen a copy ot the latest issue of VANITY FAIR.

JERRY MAXWELL