a model. He had had
scandals in his life: he admitted it humbly; and, if some jealous person,
some Jimmy, for instance, wanted to do him harm, all he had to do was to
dig in the heap, instead of hawking round that story of an imaginary
marriage.

His differences with Poland, the Parisienne, for instance: a regular Mrs.
Potiphar, that one. He had found it a hard job to get away from her. And
ever and ever so many others! He couldn't remember. People were always
talking ill of him. There was more than that, however: he, too, was
capable of manly ambition; he, too, had taken a breakneck risk. He had
perfected and patented at Washington an invention of which he had seen a
drawing, by accident, in a scientific journal--_Engineering_, or
another--a purely theoretical invention. The inventor himself, a young
London electrician, declared it to be unrealizable. Well, he,
Trampy--Poland had helped him with her purse; she was very nice about
it--he, Trampy, had had the thing made. He had deposited the models at the
Patent Office; and the apparatus itself was now in a London storage. He
would get it out, some day, and show them all what he was capable of.

Now he was wrong, perhaps, in abandoning Poland, after accepting her
services; but, after all, those were matters which concerned nobody but
himself. It was not fair play to tell Lily about them: she, he felt, would
always be the girl of his heart, the thirty-seventh and last, and it would
take a better man than Jimmy to snatch her from him!

Already, it was much to have pacified Lily on that incident of the
marriage: Lily believed him. One thing, however, disquieted Trampy:
bigamy, all the same, meant doing time. Now, if some jealous person
produced the proof of that marriage, contracted under the Western law ...
suppose it were valid ... really valid? H'm! Was he going to lose Lily for
that? And his liberty into the bargain? That Lily who was worth her weight
in gold, love and fortune in one!

Trampy resolved to broach this delicate subject:

"Suppose I was married," he hinted, one day, "that wouldn't matter.
Couldn't we ... live together ... eh?"

"I like your style!" said Lily, feeling slightly indignant at such a
proposal. "What do you take me for?"

"I was only joking," Trampy hastened to say. "If you want to be married,
I'm quite agreeable."

"I insist upon it!"

"So then you prefer to take strangers into our confidence?"

"What strangers?" asked Lily, in surp