arwell's cook
can--and--and a grand piano, and an automobile, and a stable full of
thoroughbreds and puppies--" She paused for breath.

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yes. Babies! All ages and sizes of babies, small red wrinkled ones,
and trot-abouts, and fat little boys in their first trousers--"

"Help, help!" murmured Channing. "Would there be any room in that house
for a husband?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I used to think it was a nuisance, having to
have a husband before you could have babies; but now--" she glanced at
him shyly, and looked away again.

"But now?" he repeated, leaning toward her.

"I--I've changed my mind," she murmured, her heart beating very hard.
Was he going to say anything?

The indications were that he was. His eyes had a look that she called to
herself "beaming," and he put out his arms as if to take her into them.
She swayed a little toward him, to make it easier.

But at the critical moment, discretion came once more to the rescue. He
fumbled hastily in his pocket for a cigarette, and with that in his
lips, felt safer.

"There is really no reason," he remarked, puffing, "that the operatic
career may not be combined with the luxuries you mention,
Jacqueline--pink silk curtains, infants, and all."

"Do singers marry?" she asked; and he could not but admire the
nonchalance with which she covered her disappointment.

"Rather! Fast and frequently."

"But surely they don't have babies?"

"Why not? A friend of mine on the operatic stage"--he mentioned her
name--"assures me that each baby improves her voice noticeably."

"I think it is very hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You
_know_ he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children
properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he
comes home tired at night!"

"Judging from the size of her income," murmured Channing, "I fancy that
he would not."

Jacqueline jumped up, scarlet. The chagrin of her recent repulse, the
nervous strain of the past few weeks, the reaction from too exalted a
plane of emotion, all found vent in a burst of temper rare indeed to her
sunny nature.

"That's a horrid thing to say," she flared out, "and sometimes I think
you're a horrid man! Yes, I do! When you're cynical and--and worldly
that way, I just can't bear you. So there! I'm going straight up to the
house. Good-by! You needn't try to stop me."

She went, but very slowly, regretting already her foolish anger, waiting