being to show the car to clients. After the others had gone John and I remained to talk, and I noticed that in the course of our conversation he took several drinks of whisky and soda. He was in that state of buoyancy about the new venture that you find so often in the rich amateur whose only knowledge of business comes from buying things instead of trying to sell them. He told me that he had always been very sore at his dependence on his wife for every cent he spent and that he soon hoped to be a rich man on his own account. He hinted to me that he had several things in hand from which he expected big results, and that if all went as it should he would be able to back his automobile venture with a couple of million francs. But he didn't tell me what there was to warrant these expectations, and I rather suspected that he was playing the stock market. I noticed that with every drink he got a little more sanguine, and as his spirit went up my own went down. To tell the truth, I began to fear that a good many of John's big ideas came out of the whisky bottle.
That night at dinner John was very jolly and talkative at first, but toward the end his good-nature passed off, and I could see that the reaction was setting in. John did not impress me as a drinking man. His methods were more those of a person who is bothered about something and hits the bottle to drown care.
After dinner Edith and Miss Dalghren went out to the studio, as Edith wanted to study the effects of artificial light on the portrait. John and I went into the smoking-room, and I noticed that he took three cups of strong black coffee.
