ngier door.

Then he started to walk back to his apartment. He walked very quickly,
with clenched hands. He was wondering if after all there was not
something to be said for the methods of the caveman when he went
a-wooing. Twinges of conscience the caveman may have had when all was
over, but at least he had established his right to look after the
woman he loved.

CHAPTER XIX

MRS. PEAGRIM BURNS INCENSE

"They tell me ... I am told ... I am informed ... No, one moment, Miss
Frisby."

Mrs. Peagrim wrinkled her fair forehead. It has been truly said that
there is no agony like the agony of literary composition, and Mrs.
Peagrim was having rather a bad time getting the requisite snap and
ginger into her latest communication to the Press. She bit her lip,
and would have passed her twitching fingers restlessly through her
hair but for the thought of the damage which such an action must do to
her coiffure. Miss Frisby, her secretary, an anaemic and negative young
woman, waited patiently, pad on knee, and tapped her teeth with her
pencil.

"Please do not make that tapping noise, Miss Frisby," said the
sufferer querulously. "I cannot think. Otie, dear, can't you suggest a
good phrase? You ought to be able to, being an author."

Mr. Pilkington, who was strewn over an arm-chair by the window, awoke
from his meditations, which, to judge from the furrow just above the
bridge of his tortoise-shell spectacles and the droop of his weak
chin, were not pleasant. It was the morning after the production of
"The Rose of America," and he had passed a sleepless night, thinking
of the harsh words he had said to Jill. Could she ever forgive him?
Would she have the generosity to realize that a man ought not to be
held accountable for what he says in the moment when he discovers that
he has been cheated, deceived, robbed--in a word, hornswoggled? He had
been brooding on this all night, and he wanted to go on brooding now.
His aunt's question interrupted his train of thought.

"Eh?" he said vaguely, gaping.

"Oh, don't be so absent-minded!" snapped Mrs. Peagrim, not
unjustifiably annoyed. "I am trying to compose a paragraph for the
papers about our party to-night, and I can't get the right phrase....
Read what you've written, Miss Frisby."

Miss Frisby, having turned a pale eye on the pothooks and twiddleys in
her note-book, translated them in a pale voice.

"'Surely of all the leading hostesses in New York Society there can