t you? Then I
shall be the only woman in New York to know the true inwardness of the
Drewitt affair. When do you start?"

"To-morrow morning. I shall be away for perhaps three months, and then,"
doggedly, "then I'm coming home to be married. I came in to tell you."

"And if I don't quite believe you?"

"I shall postpone the ceremony. Shall we say indefinitely, some time in
the summer?"

"Not even then. Never, I think. That troublesome girl is beginning--she
feels that she ought to tell you--"

"That there is another 'another'?"

"Yes, I fear so."

"Who will be in town for the next three months?"

"Again, I fear so."

"Then that's all right," said the optimistic Jimmie. "There never was a
man--save one, oh, lady mine--who could, for three months, avoid boring
you. When he holds forth upon every subject under the sun and stars you
will think longingly of me and of the endless variety of my one topic,
'I'm going to marry you.'"

"But if he should make it his?"

"I defy him to do it. There is no guise in which he could clothe the
idea which would not remind you instantly of me. If he should be
poetical: well, so was I when we were twenty-one. If he should give you
gifts of great price: well, so did I in those Halcyon days when I had an
allowance from my Governor and toiled not. If his is an outdoor wooing,
you will inevitably remember that I taught you to ride, to skate, to
drive, and to play golf. If he should attack you musically, you will be
surprised at the number of operas we've heard together and of duets
we've sung together. And so, in the words of my friend, fellow-sufferer,
and name-sake, Mr. Yellowplush, 'You'll still remember Jeames.'"

"That's nonsense!" cried Miss Knowles. "I've tried to be fond of you--I
_am_ fond of you and accustomed to you. The fatal point is that I am
accustomed to you. You say you never bore me. Well, you don't. And that
other men do. Well, you're right. But people don't marry people simply
because they don't bore each other."

"Your meaning is clearer than your words and much more correct. This
really essential consideration is, alas, frequently not considered."

"People should marry," said Miss Knowles with a sort of consecrated
earnestness--the most deadly of all the practiced phases of her
coquetry--"for love. Now, I'm not in love with you. If I were, the very
idea of your going away would make me miserable. And do I seem
miserable? Am I lovelorn? Look at me carefull