rand-new frame of--God knows what!"

"Eh? What?" questioned the Younger Man uneasily.

"When a girl is twenty, I tell you," persisted the Older Man--"there's
not one marrying man among us--Heaven help us!--who can swear whether
her charm is Love's own permanent food or just Nature's temporary
bait! At twenty, I tell you, there's not one man among us who can
prove whether vivacity is temperament or just plain kiddishness;
whether sweetness is real disposition or just coquetry; whether
tenderness is personal discrimination or just sex; whether dumbness is
stupidity or just brain hoarding its immature treasure; whether indeed
coldness is prudery or just conscious passion banking its fires! The
dear daredevil sweetheart whom you worship at eighteen will evolve,
likelier than not, into a mighty sour prig at forty; and the
dove-gray lass who led you to church with her prayer-book ribbons
twice every Sunday will very probably decide to go on the vaudeville
stage--when her children are just in the high school; and the
dull-eyed wallflower whom you dodged at all your college dances will
turn out, ten chances to one, the only really wonderful woman you
know! But at thirty! Oh, ye gods, Barton! If a girl interests you at
thirty you'll be utterly mad about her when she's forty--fifty--sixty!
If she's merry at thirty, if she's ardent, if she's tender, it's her
own established merriment, it's her own irreducible ardor, it's
her--Why, man alive! Why--why--"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" gasped Barton. "Whoa there! Go slow! How in
creation do you expect anybody to follow you?"

"Follow me? Follow me?" mused the Older Man perplexedly. Staring very
hard at Barton, he took the opportunity to swallow rather loudly once
or twice.

"Now speaking of Miss Edgarton," he resumed persistently, "now,
speaking of this Miss Edgarton, I don't presume for an instant that
you're looking for a wife on this trip, but are merely hankering a bit
now and then for something rather specially diverting in the line of
feminine companionship?"

"Well, what of it?" conceded the Younger Man.

"This of it," argued the Older Man. "If you are really craving the
interesting why don't you go out and rummage around for it? Rummage
around was what I said! Yes! The real hundred-cent-to-the-dollar
treasures of Life, you know, aren't apt to be found labeled as such
and lying round very loose on the smugly paved general highway! And
astonishingly good looks and astonish