y
case for the other person. The question of the hour is this--Could
_You_ be tender to _Me_???

"Only four weeks and I'm off! It will be more convenient for me to
leave directly after the wedding, and if 'twere done, 'twere well done
quickly. Grizel's _trousseau_ is reaching the acute stage, and I
thought I was busy enough helping her, without starting a second on my--

"What _am_ I saying! I must be mad. You understand that I trust to
that three months' truce, and that I promise nothing--nothing. I only
_hope_!

"_Au revoir_, Jim. To-morrow I shall be tearing my hair for writing all
this, but the mail will have gone... It will be too late.

"Katrine.

"P.S. A happy new year, Jim, _Will_ it be happy?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"Cumly, _January 7, 19--_.

"Dear Captain Blair,

"This follows quickly to retract everything that I said last week! If I
had not already spent so much on cables, and if it were not so difficult
to explain, I should have sent a flying order to burn that effusion
unread! It makes me hot to think of the things I wrote. I am not
usually so heady and bold, but the excitement was too much for me, the
brilliant shifting of the scene, the finding myself of a sudden a
leading lady, instead of a forlorn super,--the new clothes!--

"Honestly, I believe the clothes had as much to do with it as anything
else! Do you remember a character in a book a year or two ago saying
that the consciousness of being perfectly dressed imparted a peace and
joy which religion can never bestow! I have quoted that saying to many
women in turns, and each and all on the spur of the moment exclaimed
`_How true_!' though the serious-minded ones tried to back out
afterwards. I have wondered sometimes if the difference in temperament
between the two sexes isn't after all mainly a matter of clothes. A man
goes to a decent tailor, puts on a well-cut tweed or dress suit,
arranges his tie with a certain amount of skill, and--kings can do no
more! Never in all his life does he experience the agonising sensation
of entering a room and realising at a glance that he is all wrong, while
the right thing is hanging idly at home in the wardrobe; never is his
heart torn by the consciousness of inferiority, or the necessity of
putting up with a second best, when the first is a dream of beauty and
becomingness. He knows none of these trials, but then, on the other
hand, he has none of the thrills! Who could be thrill