cigarettes, "may live to astonish us yet, but of one thing I am
convinced. She will never even realize the other sex except through her
own husband. I am afraid she will grow narrow--I should hate to write as
her epitaph that she was an affectionate wife and devoted mother--but I
am perfectly certain that that is what it will come to."

"In that case," Deyes remarked gloomily, "I may as well go away."

"No! I shouldn't do that," Lady Peggy said. "I should try to alter my
point of view."

"Direct me, please," he begged.

"I should try," she continued, "to put a bridle upon my desires and take
up the reins. You could lead them in a more suitable direction."

"For instance?"

"There is myself," she declared.

He laughed quietly.

"You!" he repeated. "Why, you are the most incorrigible flirt in
Christendom. You would no more tie yourself up with one man than enter a
nunnery."

She sighed.

"I have always been misunderstood," she declared, looking at him
pathetically out of her delightful eyes. "What you call my flirtations
have been simply my attempts, more or less clumsy, to gain a husband. I
have been most unlucky. No one ever proposes to me!"

He laughed derisively.

"Your victims have been too loquacious," he replied. "How about Gayton,
who went to Africa because you offered to be his friend, and Horris--he
came to my rooms to tell me all about it the day you refused him, and
Sammy Palliser--you treated him shockingly!"

"I had forgotten them," she admitted. "They were nice men, too, all of
them, but they all made the same mistake. I remember now they did
propose to me. That, of course, was fatal."

"I scarcely see----" he began.

She patted him gently on the arm.

"My dear Gilbert," she said, "haven't I always said that I never intend
to marry any one who proposes to me? When I have quite made up my mind,
I am going to do the proposing myself!"

"Whether it is Leap Year or not?" he asked.

"Decidedly!" she answered. "Men can always shuffle out of a Leap Year
declaration. My man won't be able to escape. I can promise you that."

"Does he--exist then?" Deyes asked.

She laughed softly.

"He's existed for a good many years more than I have," she answered. "I
wasn't thinking of marrying a baby."

"Ah! Does he know?"

"Well, I'm not sure," she said thoughtfully. "He ought to, but he's such
a stupid person."

It was then that Gilbert Deyes received the shock of his life. He
discovered quite