idn't you tell a fellow all this at the outset?" Tristram
demanded. "I have been trying so to make you fond of ME!"

"This is very interesting," said Mrs. Tristram. "I like to see a man
know his own mind."

"I have known mine for a long time," Newman went on. "I made up my mind
tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth
having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When
I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in
person. It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if
he can. He doesn't have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose;
he needs only to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such
wits as he has, and to try."

"It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity."

"Well, it is certain," said Newman, "that if people notice my wife and
admire her, I shall be mightily tickled."

"After this," cried Mrs. Tristram, "call any man modest!"

"But none of them will admire her so much as I."

"I see you have a taste for splendor."

Newman hesitated a little; and then, "I honestly believe I have!" he
said.

"And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal."

"A good deal, according to opportunity."

"And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?"

"No," said Newman, half reluctantly, "I am bound to say in honesty that
I have seen nothing that really satisfied me."

"You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and
Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in
this world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I
should like to help you."

"Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?"
Tristram cried. "We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but
magnificent women are not so common."

"Have you any objections to a foreigner?" his wife continued, addressing
Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his feet on a bar of the
balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking at the stars.

"No Irish need apply," said Tristram.

Newman meditated a while. "As a foreigner, no," he said at last; "I have
no prejudices."

"My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!" cried Tristram. "You don't
know what terrible customers these foreign women are; especially the
'magnificent' ones. How should you like a fair Circassian, with a dagger
in her belt?"

Newman administered a vigorous