violet envelope and then trying to make it stick, "to a
silly boy, who--asked me for a kiss?"

"What ought you to do?" repeated the bachelor, laying down his cigar and
regarding the widow severely. "Refuse him, of course."

"Oh, of course," agreed the widow, rubbing the envelope spasmodically
with the end of her handkerchief, "but what ought I do to teach him
better?"

"I can't think of anything--better," replied the bachelor, charitably
reaching for the violet envelope and closing it firmly with his fist.

"How about just taking the kiss--without asking for it?" inquired the
widow naively, as she leaned luxuriously back among the cushions of the
divan. "Wouldn't that have been better--for him, I mean?"

"Would it?" The bachelor looked the widow straight in the eye.

"Well," replied the widow weakly, toying with some fringe on a satin
sofa pillow and carefully avoiding the bachelor's gaze, "he would have
gotten it."

"And now he never will," rejoined the bachelor with a confidence he did
not feel.

"Oh, I don't know." The widow became suddenly interested in the
arrangement of the fringe on the satin sofa pillow. "But it isn't the
man who asks a woman for a kiss or--or anything--who gets it. It's the
man who takes for granted."

"Takes--what?"

"Takes her by surprise, Mr. Travers," explained the widow, "and doesn't
give her time to think or to say no. The short cut to managing a woman
is not argument or reason. It's action. She may like to be coaxed, but
it's the man who orders her about whom she admires--and obeys. Eve has
never forgotten that she is only a rib and when Adam forgets it,
she----"

"Makes him feel like a small part of the vertebrae," interpolated the
bachelor tentatively.

"Naturally," returned the widow, tying the sofa pillow fringe in a hard
knot and then untying it again, "when a man comes to her on his knees
she is clever enough to keep him there; but when he comes to her with a
scepter in his hand and determination in his eye, she has a wholesome
respect for him. It's not the man who begs but the one who demands that
receives. It's not the man who asks a girl to marry him, but the one who
tells her that she is going to marry him, who gets her. It's not the
husband who requests the privilege of carrying a latch-key or staying
down town at night who can do so without fear and trembling, but the one
who calmly takes the latch-key and telephones his wife that he is going
to stay down tow