nly the evenly
balanced folks would see that and not act as if they were being
insulted!

While he undressed, Northrup was sketching his plot mentally. In the
morning it would be _fixed_; it would be more like copying than
creating when a pen was resorted to.

"I'll take that girl in the yellow house and do no end of things with
her. Dual personality! Lord, and in this stagnant pool! All right.
Dual personality. Now she must get a jog about her husband and wake
up! Two men and one woman. Triangle, of course. Nothing new under
God's heaven. It's the handling of the ragged old things. I can make
rather a big story out of the ingredients at hand."

Northrup felt that he was going to sleep; going to rise to the
restored desire for work. No wonder he laughed and whistled--softly;
he had overtaken himself!

Three days later a telegram came from Mrs. Northrup.

"Go on," it said simply. Mrs. Northrup knew when it was wisest to let
go. But this was not true of Kathryn Morris, the other woman most
closely attached to Northrup's life. Kathryn never let go. When she
lost interest in any one, or anything, she flung it, or him, from her
with no doubtful attitude of mind. Kathryn meant to marry Northrup
some day and he fully expected to marry her, though neither of them
could ever recall just when, or how, this understanding had been
arrived at.

It was, to all appearances, a most fitting outcome to close family
interests and friendships. It had just naturally happened up to the
point when both would desire to bring it to a culmination. The next
step, naturally, must be taken by Kathryn for, when Northrup had
ventured to suggest, during his convalescence, a definite date for
their wedding, Kathryn had, with great show of tenderness, pushed the
matter aside.

The fact was, marriage to Kathryn was not a terminal, but a way
station where one was obliged to change for another stretch on a
pleasant and unhampered journey, and she had no intention of marrying
a possible invalid or, perhaps, a dying man.

So while Northrup struggled out of his long and serious illness,
Kathryn played her little game under cover. Some women, rather dull
and stupid ones, can do this admirably if they are young enough and
lovely enough to carry it through, and Kathryn was both. She had also
that peculiar asset of looking divinely intuitive and sweet during her
silences, and it would have taken a keen reader of human nature to
decide whether Kathryn