And I see your considerateness in putting its
advantages negatively."

"Negatively?"

"In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on what
it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get
away from a life like this." He summed up in a disparaging glance the
background of indigent furniture. "The question is how you'll like
coming back to it."

She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. "I only know
I don't like leaving it."

He flung back sombrely, "You don't even put it conditionally then?"

Her gaze deepened. "On what?"

He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and paused
before her. "On the alternative of marrying me."

The slow color--even her blushes seemed deliberate--rose to her lower
lids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves into a smile
and she waited.

He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose nervous
exasperation escapes through his muscles.

"And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!"

Her eyes triumphed for him. "In less!"

"The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be then?
It's slaving one's life away for a stranger!" He took her hands
abruptly. "You'll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo? I heard
Hollingsworth say to-day that he meant to take his yacht over to the
Mediterranean--"

She released herself. "If you think that--"

"I don't. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean." He broke off
incoherently. "I believe your Aunt Virginia does, though. She somehow
connotes Hollingsworth and the Mediterranean." He caught her hands
again. "Alexa--if we could manage a little hole somewhere out of town?"

"Could we?" she sighed, half yielding.

"In one of those places where they make jokes about the mosquitoes," he
pressed her. "Could you get on with one servant?"

"Could you get on without varnished boots?"

"Promise me you won't go, then!"

"What are you thinking of, Stephen?"

"I don't know," he stammered, the question giving unexpected form to his
intention. "It's all in the air yet, of course; but I picked up a tip
the other day--"

"You're not speculating?" she cried, with a kind of superstitious
terror.

"Lord, no. This is a sure thing--I almost wish it wasn't; I mean if I
can work it--" He had a sudden vision of the comprehensiveness of the
temptation. If only he had been less sure of Dinslow! His assurance gave
the situatio