en she got round to it. She made
up for all the sorry dances she'd led him. She was absolutely
shameless. She made love to him in public, she----"

"She still does, Evelyn," I said. "I think that's one reason why I
like her so much, and him. There's nobody else so frank and natural
about their feelings for each other. Why, it's beautiful to see."

"Archie," said Evelyn, "for short periods of time she loved some of the
men she didn't marry almost as hard."

After a moment's silence, she said with hesitation,

"It's a lucky thing for her that all the men she thought she cared
about were gentlemen. You must have noticed yourself how little
yesterday means to her, how less than nothing tomorrow means, until it
becomes today."

"Well," I said, "it all bolls down to this, that after many
vicissitudes, she found her Paradise at last."

"Who can be sure that a girl who had as many love affairs as she had
is--all through!"

Just then Dawson Cooper came back and took Evelyn away with him. I was
immensely interested in all that she had told me about Lucy. I rather
wished that I might, for a while, have been one of the many. And I was
annoyed to learn that people were undertaking to make our business
theirs.

"I'll tell John about it when he comes back," I said, "and if he thinks
best, why I won't see so much of her."

But when he came back it did not seem worth while to tell him.

X

I had forgotten that John Fulton was to return Monday, until Lucy gave
it as a reason for not being able to ride on that afternoon.

"Even if the train is on time," she said, "I don't think I ought to go
chasing off, do you? He'd like us all to be at home together and maybe
later he'd like me to take him for a little drive."

She was rather solemn for Lucy. I did not in the least gather that she
would rather ride with me than play around with her husband. I did
gather that she was not using her own wishes and preferences as an
excuse, but the physical fact of John's home-coming. And I learned in
the same moment that I wished his return might be indefinitely
postponed, and that Monday afternoon with no Lucy to ride with promised
to be a bore.

I saw her doing chores in the village, Jock and Hurry crowded into the
seat beside her, just before the arrival of the New York train. From
the back of the runabout dangled the reed-like, moth-eaten legs of
Cornelius Twombley. For him, too, the return of the master was a
j