a way
that it will be as hard as possible for her to refuse. That isn't
ladylike, but--I've dropped out of the lady class."

"And if she refuses?"

"Then I'll go one after another to several very rich men I know, and
ask them as a business proposition."

"Go in person," advised he with an undisguised sneer.

"I'll raise no false hopes in them," she said. "If they choose to
delude themselves, I'll not go out of my way to undeceive them--until I
have to."

"So THIS is Mildred Gower?"

"You made that remark before."

"Really?"

"When Stanley showed you a certain photograph of me."

"I remember. This is the same woman."

"It's me," laughed she. "The real me. You'd not care to be married to
her?"

"No," said he. Then, after a brief silence: "Yet, curiously, it was
that woman with whom I fell in love. No, not exactly in love, for I've
been thinking about what you said as to the difference between love in
posse and love in esse, to put it scientifically--between love as a
prospect and love as a reality."

"And I was right," said she. "It explains why marriages go to pieces
and affairs come to grief. Those lovers mistook love's promise to come
for fulfillment. Love doesn't die. It simply fails to come--doesn't
redeem its promise."

"That's the way it might be with us," said he. "That's the way it would
be with us," rejoined she.

He did not answer. When they spoke again it was of indifferent
matters. An hour and a half after they started, they were at Mrs.
Belloc's again. She asked him to have tea in the restaurant next door.
He declined. He went up the steps with her, said:

"Well, I wish you luck. Moldini is the best teacher in America."

"How did you know Moldini was to teach me?" exclaimed she.

He smiled, put out his hand in farewell. "Crossley told me. Good-by."

"He told Crossley! I wonder why." She was so interested in this new
phase that she did not see his outstretched hand, or the look of bitter
irony that came into his eyes at this proof of the subordinate place
love and he had in her thoughts.

"I'm nervous and anxious," she said apologetically. "Moldini told me he
had some scheme about getting the money. If he only could! But no
such luck for me," she added sadly.

Keith hesitated, debated with himself, said: "You needn't worry.
Moldini got it--from Crossley. Fifty dollars a week for a year."

"You got Crossley to do it?"

"No. He had done it before I saw him.