e sobs.

"What is it, honey-girl? What is the matter?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Only I'm so glad you're pleased, and so relieved you
aren't engaged to Miss Morton."

"Bobs, you goose----"

"I just couldn't stand it, Jerry, to have you married to just a rich
woman."

"I'm not going to marry any rich woman, Bobs, you can count on that.
They are all too full of themselves. The only woman I shall ever marry
will have just one career."

"What, Jerry?"

"Her career will be Jerry Paxton! Selfish, if you like, but that is the
only way I can ever get away with matrimony. I don't like marriage, I
hate being tied down, you know how I hate it. If I married a woman with
a career of her own, with the independence and egotism which come to
women with careers, why-- Lord, Bobs, I'd end by murdering her!"

"You're the most selfish human being in the world, Jerry!"

"No, I'm like the majority of men, only I say it out and the rest keep
it dark."

"But you can't pick out the person you intend to love, Jerry. It doesn't
happen that way. Love gets you, torments you, numbs your brain, upsets
your mind."

"He won't get me, Bobs. I'm on guard."

"Some of us go on guard too late, Jerry."

"Look here, old lady, it isn't like you to talk this sort of stuff. Buck
up! Love isn't life; it's just one incident of it. Work is the real
thing, you and I both know that, and matrimony plays the devil with an
artist's work, so it's not for us."

"Jerry, you--you beast!" she choked, and ran out of the room.

He stood where she left him, startled, sorry, angry. Bobs, his old pal,
his fellow worker; he loved her dearly. He would not hurt her for the
world, nor would he marry her. Must he always be in this tumult, this
state of unrest? What was there in him which gave all the women he knew
the idea of his pursuit of them? How was he to guard against this
misunderstanding of his motives? A portrait painter could not manage a
love affair with every woman who sat for him.

This was the culminating moment of his weeks of loneliness, his
discouragement about his work, his fury at having constantly to
extricate himself from tender situations which he did not make. Bobs's
revelation made him feel a brute, a cad, but he could not marry Bobs; he
did not want to. How could he protect himself from himself?

With an apologetic tap at the door, Jane entered. "Sorry, I forgot my
bag," she said.

He confronted her squarely, looked her in the eyes and spoke,