had spoiled me. The thing that has happened to
me is the thing that always happens to those who assume to be
dictators. I just want you to know, now, that I'm glad and proud and
happy because you have come into your own. It hurt me just at first.
That was the pride of me. I'm quite over that now. You're not only
president of the T. A. Buck Company in name. You're its actual head.
And that's as it should be. Long live the King!"

Buck sat silent a moment. Then,

"I had to do it, Emma." She looked up. "You have a wonderful brain,"
said Buck then, and the two utterances seemed connected in his mind.

They seemed to bring no great satisfaction to the woman to whom he
addressed them, however. She thanked him dryly, as women do when their
brain is dragged into an intimate conversation.

"But," said Buck, and suddenly stood up, looking at her very intently,
"it isn't for your mind that I love you this minute. I love you for
your eyes, Emma, and for your mouth--you have the tenderest, most
womanly-sweet mouth in the world--and for your hair, and the way your
chin curves. I love you for your throat-line, and for the way you walk
and talk and sit, for the way you look at me, and for the way you don't
look at me."

He reached down and gathered Emma McChesney, the alert, the aggressive,
the capable, into his arms, quite as men gather the clingingest kind of
woman. "And now suppose you tell me just why and how you love me."

And Emma McChesney told him.

When, at last, he was leaving,

"Don't you think," asked Emma McChesney, her hands on his shoulders,
"that you overdid the fascination thing just the least leetle bit there
on the road?"

"Well, but you told me to entertain them, didn't you?"

"Yes," reluctantly; "but I didn't tell you to consecrate your life to
'em. The ordinary fat, middle-aged, every-day traveling man will never
be able to sell Featherlooms in the Middle West again. They won't have
'em. They'll never be satisfied with anything less than John Drew
after this."

"Emma McChesney, you're not marrying me because a lot of overdressed,
giggling, skittish old girls have taken a fancy to make eyes at me, are
you!"

Emma McChesney stood up very straight and tall.

"I'm marrying you, T. A., because you are a great, big, fine,
upstanding, tender, wonderful----"

"Oh, well, then that's all right," broke in Buck, a little tremulously.

Emma McChesney's face grew serious.

"But promise me one