spectator, who thinks he knows better than the creator of the ugly and
the beautiful, the fair and foul, the evil and good."

"Oh, _now_ if the Intellectual Club could hear you!" Margaret Green
said, with a long, deep, admiring suspiration. "And what are you
going to do with your critical bookstore?"

"I'm going to sell it. I've had an offer from the author of that
best-seller--I've told you about him. I was just trying to censor that
magazine while I was thinking it over. He's got an idea. He's going to
keep it a critical bookstore, but the criticism is to be made by
universal suffrage and the will of the majority. The latest books will
be put to a vote; and the one getting the greatest number of votes
will be the first offered for sale, and the author will receive a free
passage to Europe by the southern route."

"The southern route!" Margaret mused. "I've never been that way. It
must be delightful."

"Then come with _me_! _I'm_ going."

"But how can I?"

"By marrying me!"

"I never thought of that," she said. Then, with the conscientious
resolution of an elderly girl who puts her fate to the touch of any
risk the truth compels, she added: "Or, yes! I _have_. But I never
supposed you would ask me." She stared at him, and she was aware she
was letting her mouth hang open. While she was trying for some word to
close it with he closed it for her.

XIV

A FEAST OF REASON

Florindo and Lindora had come to the end of another winter in town,
and had packed up for another summer in the country. They were sitting
together over their last breakfast until the taxi should arrive to
whirl them away to the station, and were brooding in a joint gloom
from the effect of the dinner they had eaten at the house of a friend
the night before, and, "Well, thank goodness," she said, "there is an
end to that sort of thing for _one_ while."

"An end to _that_ thing," he partially assented, "but not that _sort_
of thing."

"What do you mean?" she demanded excitedly, almost resentfully.

"I mean that the lunch is of the nature of the dinner, and that in the
country we shall begin lunching where we left off dining."

"Not instantly," she protested shrilly. "There will be nobody there
for a while--not for a whole month, nearly."

"They will be there before you can turn round, almost; and then you
women will begin feeding one another there before you have well