his because of what has happened in regard to your money
affairs? Believe me, my dear, that makes no difference to me. It
is you I love--you, the woman of my heart--and not a certain, and
doubtless desirable, amount of metal disks and dirty paper."

"Now I suppose you're going to be very noble and very nasty about it,"
observed Miss Hugonin, resentfully. "That's my main objection to
you, you know, that you haven't any faults I can recognise and feel
familiar and friendly with."

"My dear," he protested, "I assure you I am not intentionally
disagreeable."

At that, she raised velvet eyes to his--with a visible effort,
though--and smiled.

"I know you far too well to think that," she said, wistfully. "I
know I'm not worthy of you. I'm tremendously fond of you, beautiful,
but--but, you see, I love somebody else," Margaret concluded, with
admirable candour.

"Ah!" said he, in a rather curious voice. "The painter chap, eh?"

Then Margaret's face flamed in a wonderful glow of shame and happiness
and pride that must have made the surrounding roses very hopelessly
jealous. A quaint mothering look, sacred, divine, Madonna-like,
woke in her great eyes as she thought--remorsefully--of
how unhappy Billy must be at that very moment and of how big he was
and of his general niceness; and she desired, very heartily, that this
fleshy young man would make his scene and have done with it. Who was
he, forsooth, to keep her from Billy? She wished she had never heard
of Felix Kennaston.

_Souvent femme varie_, my brothers.

However, "Yes," said Margaret..

"You are a dear," said Mr. Kennaston, with conviction in his voice.

I dare say Margaret was surprised.

But the poet had taken her hand and had kissed it reverently, and then
sat down beside her, twisting one foot under him in a fashion he had.
He was frankly grateful to her for refusing him; and, the mask of
affectation slipped, she saw in him another man.

"I am an out-and-out fraud," he confessed, with the gayest of smiles.
"I am not in love with you, and I am inexpressibly glad that you are
not in love with me. Oh, Margaret, Margaret--you don't mind if I call
you that, do you? I shall have to, in any event, because I like you so
tremendously now that we are not going to be married--you have no idea
what a night I spent."

"I consider it most peculiar and unsympathetic of my hair not to have
turned gray. I thought you were going to have me, you see."

Margaret was fa