owance."

"Thank you, but I have my money, and I don't need it."

This seemed to amuse him tremendously; and even Rue laughed a little.

"You are going to take your money to Paris?" he asked.

"Yes."

"To buy things?"

"Oh, no. Just to have it with me."

His rather agreeable laughter sounded again.

"So _that_ was what you forgot to put in your suitcase," he said. "No
wonder you went back for it."

"There was something else very important, too."

"What, darling?"

"My drawings," she explained innocently.

"Your drawings! Do you mean you've got them, too?"

"Yes. I want to take them to Paris and compare them with the pictures
I shall see there. It ought to teach me a great deal. Don't you think
so?"

"Are you crazy to study?" he asked, touched to the quick by her utter
ignorance.

"It's all I dream about. If I could work that way and support myself
and my father and mother----"

"But, Rue! Wake up! We're married, little girl. You don't have to work
to support anybody!"

"I--forgot," said the girl vaguely, her confused grey eyes resting on
his laughing, greenish ones.

Still laughing, he summoned the waiter, paid the reckoning; Ruhannah
rose as he did; they went slowly out together.

On the sidewalk beside their car stood the new chauffeur, smoking a
cigarette which he threw away without haste when he caught sight of
them. However, he touched the peak of his cap civilly, with his
forefinger.

Brandes, lighting a cigar, let his slow eyes rest on the new man for a
moment. Then he helped Rue into the tonneau, got in after her, and
thoughtfully took the wheel, conscious that there was something or
other about his new chauffeur that he did not find entirely to his
liking.

CHAPTER X

DRIVING HEAD-ON

It was mid-afternoon when they began to pass through that series of
suburbs which the city has flung like a single tentacle northward for
a hundred miles along the eastern banks of the Hudson.

A smooth road of bluestone with a surface like velvet, rarely broken
by badly paved or badly worn sections, ran straight south. Past
mansions standing amid spacious lawns all ablaze with late summer and
early autumn flowers they sped; past parks, long stretches of walls,
high fences of wrought iron through which brief glimpses of woodlands
and splendid gardens caught Rue's eye. And, every now and then,
slowing down to traverse some village square and emerging from the
further limits, the great rive