g the car."

"There's my car," Allerton suggested.

"Oh, so there is." Barbara took this proposal as a matter of course.
"Then we'll say to-morrow. I'll call up Eugene and tell him when to
come for me."

With Allerton beside her, and driving down Fifth Avenue, she said: "I
see how to do it, Rash. You must leave it to me."

He replied in the tone of a child threatened with the loss of his role
in a game. "I can't leave it to you altogether."

"Then leave it to me as much as you can. I see what to do and you
don't. Furthermore, I know just how to do it."

"You're wonderful, Barbe," he said, humbly.

"I'm wonderful so long as you don't interfere with me."

"Oh, well, I shan't do that."

She turned to him sharply. "Is that a promise?"

"Why do you want a promise?" he asked, in some wonder.

"Because I do."

"That is, you can't trust me."

"My dear Rash, who _could_ trust you after what----?"

"Oh, well, then, I promise."

"Then that's understood. And if anything happens, you won't go hedging
and saying you didn't mean it in that way?"

"It seems to me you're very suspicious."

"One's obliged to foresee everything with you, Rash. It isn't as if
one was dealing with an ordinary man."

"You mean that I'm to give you carte blanche, and have no will of my
own at all."

"I mean that when I'm so reasonable, you must try to be reasonable on
your side."

"Well, I will."

As they drew up in front of the New Netherlands Club, he escaped
without committing himself further.

If he dined with a bachelor friend that night he must have cut the
evening short, for at half past nine he re-entered the back
drawing-room where Letty was sitting before the fire, her red book in
her lap. She sat as a lover stands at a tryst as to which there is no
positive engagement. To fortify herself against disappointment she had
been trying to persuade herself that he wouldn't come, and that she
didn't expect him.

He came, but he came as a man who has something on his mind. Almost
without greeting he sat down, took the book from her lap and proceeded
to look up the place at which he had left off.

"Miss Walbrook's lovely, isn't she?" she said, before he had found the
page.

"She's a very fine woman," he assented. "Do you remember where we
stopped?"

"It was at, 'So let it be, said the little mermaid, turning pale as
death.' You know her very well, don't you?"

"Oh, very well indeed. I think we begin here: 'But you will h