til he was fairly
rid of one wife, he could not expect another to throw herself into his
arms, and he awkwardly flitted about her, like a moth about a lantern,
unable even to singe his wings in the flame.

"Then it is decided?" he asked. "You are really going abroad?"

"I am really going to take Esther to Europe for at least two years. We
want excitement. America is too tame."

"May I come over and see you there?"

"No followers are to be allowed. I have forbidden Esther to think of
them. She must devote all her time to art, or I shall be severe with
her."

"But I suppose you don't mean to devote all your own time to art."

"I must take care of her," replied Catherine. "Then I have got to write
some more sonnets. My hand is getting out in sonnets."

"Paris will spoil you; I shall wish you had never left your prairie,"
said Wharton sadly.

"It is you that have spoiled me," replied she. "You have made me
self-conscious, and I am going abroad to escape your influence."

"Do me a favor when you are there; go to Avignon and Vaucluse; when you
come to Petrarch's house, think of me, for there I passed the most
hopeless hours of my life."

"No, I will not go there to be sad. Sadness is made only for poetry or
painting. It is your affair, not mine. I mean to be gay."

"Try, then!" said Wharton. "See for yourself how far gayety will carry
you. My turn will come! We all have to go over that cataract, and you
will have to go over with the rest of us."

Catherine peered down into the spray and foam beneath as though she were
watching herself fall, and then replied: "I shall stay in the shallowest
puddle I can find."

"You will one day learn to give up your own life and follow an ideal,"
said Wharton.

Catherine laughed at his solemn speech with a boldness that irritated
him. "Men are always making themselves into ideals and expecting women
to follow them," said she. "You are all selfish. Tell me now honestly,
would you not sell yourself and me and all New York, like Faust in the
opera, if you could paint one picture like Titian?"

Wharton answered sulkily: "I would like to do it on Faust's conditions."

"I knew it," cried she exultingly.

"If ever the devil, or any one else," continued Wharton, "can get me to
say to the passing moment, 'stay, thou art so fair,' he can have me for
nothing. By that time I shall be worth nothing."

"Your temper will be much sweeter," interjected Catherine.

"Faust made a bargain