d observations in French, Spanish, and English, and
splitting red peppers and dried watermelon seeds with his heavy curved
beak. He was a gorgeous bird, with crimson and turquoise blue on him,
and a capacity for deviltry restrained only by a silver anklet and
chain, gifts from Querida, as was also the parrot.

So Valerie, in view of the great change impending, began to put her
earthly house in order--without any particular reason, however, because
the great change would not affect her quarters or her living in them.
Nor could she afford to permit it to interfere with her business career
for which perfect independence was necessary.

She had had it out with Neville one stormy afternoon in January,
stopping in for tea after posing for John Burleson's Psyche fountain
ordered by Penrhyn Cardemon. She had demanded from Neville acquiescence
in her perfect freedom of action, absolute independence; had modestly
requested non-interference in her business affairs and the liberty to
support herself.

"There is no other way, Louis," she explained very sweetly. "I do not
think I am going to lose any self-respect in giving myself to you--but
there would not be one shred of it left to cover me if I were not as
free as you are to make the world pay me fairly for what I give it."

And, another time, she had said to him: "It is better not to tell me all
about your personal, private, and financial affairs--better that I do
not tell you about mine. Is it necessary to burst into financial and
trivial confidences when one is in love?

"I have an idea that that is what spoils most marriages. To me there is
a certain respectability in reticence when a girl is very much in love.
I would no more open my personal and private archives in all their
petty disorder to your inspection than I would let you see me
dress--even if we had been married for hundreds of years."

[Illustration: "She began by balancing her check book."]

And still, on another occasion, when he had fought her for hours in an
obstinate determination to make her say she would marry him--and when,
beaten, chagrined, baffled, he had lost his temper, she won him back
with her child-like candour and self-control.

"Your logic," he said, "is unbaked, unmature, unfledged. It's
squab-logic, I tell you, Valerie; and it is not very easy for me to
listen to it."

"I'm afraid that I am not destined to be entirely easy for you, dear,
even with love as the only tie with which to bind