prize-fights, censorship and
scandalous divorces in high life.

"Why isn't your head turned?" Clavering asked her one day when the
sensation was about a month old and was beginning to expire
journalistically for want of fresh fuel. (Not a woman in New York
could be induced to admit that she was taking the treatment.) "You are
the most famous woman in America and the pioneer of a revolution that
may have lasting and momentous consequences on which we can only
speculate vaguely today. I don't believe you are as unmoved as you
look. It's not in woman's nature--in human nature. Publicity goes to
the head and then descends to the marrow of the bones."

"I'm not unmoved. I've been tremendously interested and excited. I
find that newspaper notoriety is the author of a distinctly new
sensation." And then she felt a disposition to play with fire.
Clavering was in one of his rare detached moods, and had evidently come
for an hour of agreeable companionship. "I am beginning to get a
little bored and tired. If it were not for this Vienna Fund--and to
the newspapers for their assistance I am eternally grateful--I believe
I'd suggest that we leave for Austria tomorrow."

"And I wouldn't go." Clavering stood on the hearthrug smiling down at
her with humorous defiance. "You switched me on to that play, and
there I stick until it is finished. No chance for it in a honeymoon,
and no chance for undiluted happiness with that crashing round inside
my head."

She shrank and turned cold, but recovered herself sharply and dismissed
the pang. It was her first experience, in her exhaustive knowledge of
men, of the writing temperament; and after all it was part of the
novelty of the man who had obliterated every other from her mind. Nor
had she any intention of letting him see that he could hurt her. She
smiled sweetly and asked:

"How is it coming on? Are you satisfied with it?"

"Yes, I am. And so is Gora Dwight. I've finished two acts and I read
them to her last night."

"Ah? Your Egeria?"

"Not a bit of it. But she's a wise cold-blooded critic. You can't
blame me for not even talking about it to you. I see so little of you
that I've no intention of wasting any of the precious time."

"But you might let me read it."

"I'd rather wait until it's finished and as polished and perfect as I
can make it. I always want you to know me at my best."

"Oh, my dear! You forget that we are to be made one and remain tw