a lot. I think we
make a handsome couple--eh--what's your first name?"

"Lorna."

"Lorna, then. My name's Ed, but everybody calls me Gid."

As soon as the melon was served, he ordered the champagne
opened. "To our better acquaintance," said he, lifting his
glass toward her.

"Thank you," said she, in a suffocated voice, touching her
glass to her lips.

He was too polite to speak, even in banter, of what he thought
was the real cause of her politeness and silence. But he must
end this state of overwhelmedness at grand surroundings. Said he:

"You're kind o' shy, aren't you, Lorna? Or is that your game?"

"I don't know. You've had a very interesting life, haven't
you? Won't you tell me about it?"

"Oh--just ordinary," replied he, with a proper show of modesty.
And straightway, as Susan had hoped, he launched into a minute
account of himself--the familiar story of the energetic,
aggressive man twisting and kicking his way up from two or
three dollars a week. Susan seemed interested, but her mind
refused to occupy itself with a narrative so commonplace.
After Rod and his friends this boastful business man was dull
and tedious. Whenever he laughed at an account of his superior
craft--how he had bluffed this man, how he had euchered that
one--she smiled. And so in one more case the common masculine
delusion that women listen to them on the subject of
themselves, with interest and admiration as profound as their
own, was not impaired.

"But," he wound up, "I've stayed plain Ed Gideon. I never have
let prosperity swell _my_ head. And anyone that knows me'll
tell you I'm a regular fool for generosity with those that come
at me right. . . . I've always been a favorite with the ladies."

As he was pausing for comment from her, she said, "I can
believe it." The word "generosity" kept echoing in her mind.
Generosity--generosity. How much talk there was about it!
Everyone was forever praising himself for his generosity, was
reciting acts of the most obvious selfishness in proof. Was
there any such thing in the whole world as real generosity?

"They like a generous man," pursued Gid. "I'm tight in
business--I can see a dollar as far as the next man and chase
it as hard and grab it as tight. But when it comes to the
ladies, why, I'm open-handed. If they treat me right, I treat
them right." Then, fearing that he had tactlessly raised a
doubt of his invincibility, he hastily added, "But they alwa