would be
willing to remain protoplasm all our lives to possess a tithe of his
genius--you and I among the number, Tabby. You needn't look at me so
reproachfully out of your old-gold eyes. You know you would.

You have seen Sallie Cox, haven't you? Then you know how it jarred my
nerves to have her rush in upon me when my mind was full of the Percivals.

Sallie has flirted joyously through life thus far, and has appeared to
have about as little heart as any girl I ever knew. Sallie is the _sauce
piquante_ in one's life--absolutely necessary at times to make things
taste at all, but a little of her goes a long way. At least so I thought
until to-day.

"I've got something to tell you, Ruth," she said, "so come with me, and we
will take a little drive before going to cooking-school."

I went, knowing, of course, that she wanted to confide something about
some of her lovers.

"I am going to be married," she announced coldly. "It's Payson Osborne
this time, and I'm really going to see the thing through. It's rather a
joke on me, because it commenced this way. I was sick of lovers, and some
of the last had been so unpleasant, not to say rude, when I threw them
over, that I thought I would take a vacation. So when I met Payson, I
said, 'What do you say to a Platonic friendship?' It sounds harmless, you
know, Ruth, and he, not knowing me at all, assented. If he had been a man
who knew of my checkered career, he would have refused, suspecting, of
course, that I was going to flirt with him under a new name. But, as I was
serious this time, I knew it was all right. So we began. I suppose you
know he is enormously rich, besides being so handsome, and there will not
be a girl in town who won't say I raised heaven and earth to get him; but
I don't mind telling you, Ruth--because you are such an old dear, and
never are bothered with lovers(!); besides, it will do me good to tell it,
and I know you will never betray me--that I never cared for any man on
earth except Winston Percival. You needn't jump, and look as though the
house was on fire. It's the solemn truth, and I never dreamed that he
cared for Rachel until he married her. Mind you, he never pretended to
love me. It is every bit one-sided, and I don't care if it is. I am glad
that a frivolous, shallow-minded, rattle-brained thing like me had sense
enough to fall in love with the most glorious man that ever came into her
life. I shouldn't have made him half as good a wife as