e me feel perfectly comfortable? Haven't you
been--being tactful, with all your might, ever since we started?
Because I have."

"Well, then, for heaven's sake," he said, "let's quit! Quit trying so
infernally hard, I mean. It's too nice a morning to spoil. You know, if
the sun manages to come out, as it's trying to, it will be a very
handsome April day."

"I don't think talking about the weather is much of an improvement," she
commented. "Tony, let's give it up, for to-day I mean. We'll try again
sometime from a fresh start. This is perfectly hopeless."

He tried to pretend that she didn't mean it but she made it clear even
with a touch of asperity that she did. "Oh, all right," he growled and
reached for the handle to the door.

"Don't be silly," she commanded. "I'm not going to leave you out here in
the wilds of Garfield Park. Where do you want to go? Is it too early for
your lunch?"

"Mrs. Wollaston told me to come at one," he said. "You aren't supposed to
be ahead of time for a thing like that, are you? Anyhow, I've got to go
back to my room first."

She caught up the name. "Sarah told me about your going there. First to
tune the piano and then the evening when she sang your songs. Sarah's
quite eloquent about it."

"Yes, poor Sarah, I know. Ben was quoting her this morning. However, that
won't make the least difference with what I'm going to do."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Why, I suppose," he said, "that I'm going to do what people speak of as
settling down. What they mean by that is taking an interest in
consequences--more of an interest in what things lead to than in what
they are. Well, that's what I'm at now."

"That's a change, all right, for you," she said.

He agreed with her. "I knew when it happened," he added. "It happened
when I heard Paula Carresford sing one of my songs. Do you remember the
story that used to be in the school reader about the tiger that tasted
blood and ate up the princess? You know, Jennie, it's practically true
that up to that night I'd never heard any of my music at all--except
mutilated fragments of it as I played it myself. And I'll tell you it was
a staggering experience. The queerest experience I ever had in my life,
too. I'll tell you about that sometime. But I changed right there, just
the way the tiger did. I don't happen to want a fur overcoat nor an
automobile nor an apartment on the Drive. I honestly don't want them.
They aren't a part of my dr