ttering from the patent clothes-line! Futurist
painting of Young Artist Pushing a Pram! Don't look at me with such
an agonized expression of the ears, Peter!"

But Peter had no answering smile. His face had changed, and there
was that in his eyes which gave Hemingway pause.

"Why, old chap, I was merely joking!" he began, with real concern.

"Peter!" said the woman, softly. "You have had--a disappointment?
But, my dear boy, you are so _very_ young. Don't take it too much to
heart, Peter. At your age nothing is final, really." And she smiled
at him.

A flush suffused the young man's forehead. He felt shamed and
miserable. He _couldn't_ flaunt his price-tag before these unbuyable
souls whose beautiful and true marriage was based upon love, and
sympathy, and mutual ideals! He _couldn't_ rattle his chains, or
explain Anne Champneys. He couldn't, indeed, force himself to speak
of her at all. The thing was bad enough, but to talk about it--No!
He lifted troubled eyes.

"I am afraid--in my case--it is final," he said, in a low voice.
And after a pause, in a louder tone: "Yes--please understand--it is
final."

"Oh, Peter dear, I'm sorry! But--"

"You're talking nonsense. Why, you're barely twenty-one!" protested
Hemingway. "Much water must flow under the bridge, Peter, before you
can say of anything: it is final. You've got a long life ahead of
you to--"

"Work in," finished Peter. "Yes, I know that. I have my chance to
work. That is enough." At that his head went up.

Mrs. Hemingway puckered her brows. She leaned toward him, her eyes
lighting up.

"Peter!" said she, mischievously, her cheek dimpling. "Peter, aren't
you rather leaving the Red Admiral out of your calculations?"

CHAPTER XII

"NOT BY BREAD ALONE"

Mrs. Peter Champneys drove away from the scene of her wedding,
feeling as if boiling water had been poured over her. No man of all
the men she had ever met had looked at her with just such an
expression as she had encountered in Peter Champneys's eyes, and the
memory of it filled her with a rankling sense of injustice. He had
married her for the same reason she had married him, hadn't he? Then
why should he think himself a whit better than she was? It seemed to
her that all the unkindness, all the slights she had ever endured,
had come to a head in Peter's distressed and astonished glance.

Nancy had no illusions as to her own personal appearance, but it
occurred to her that her bridegroom le