y getting isn't such an ugly business, Henry, when you risk
something. It puts a bit of romance into the thing. I think I rather
despise people who make money just by sitting in an office and guessing
right."

"Clara, how old are you? Sixteen?"

"I don't mind telling you that I'm older than I look, and it's a wonder to
me after the hard knocks I've had. Well, do you think you can hobble back
to Soria's?"

"Let's wait a little longer. I could wish it a little cooler."

"If you'd wear a sombrero instead of that white thing----"

"Can't. I'm not built for a sombrero. Makes me look like the villain in a
show."

Clara burst into laughter.

"Henry," she said, "what an absurd world this is once a human being cuts
loose from his original moorings!"

"Yes? It's an almighty hot world when he cuts loose from a roof and an
ice-water tank, I've noticed."

"I'm not thinking of ordinary things--I'm thinking of you and me and
Boston," pursued Clara, firmly.

"Clara, I can stand a good deal, especially from you, but if you insist
upon talking about Boston I'm likely to do something that we'll both
regret."

"I was just thinking that if you and I had stayed in Boston, in our own
little niches, as our kind of people usually do, what would we be doing?"
went on Clara, meditatively.

"I would be having a gin fizz at the club," said Hard, pensively, "to be
followed possibly by a game of bridge and a dinner--a real, human dinner,
not just food--at my brother John's."

"If I had stayed where I belonged, or where everybody said I belonged when
my father died and the family income disappeared," said Clara,
persistently, "I would be teaching music in a girls' school, and planning
a trip to Italy with a lot of other middle-aged spinsters. Instead of
that, I put all that I had into a two years' study in London and Paris and
fell in with a wandering Englishman, married him, and here I am."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't stay where you belonged, Clara, for quite apart
from the pleasure of your company, which under sane conditions I find very
delightful, I don't seem to see you in the role of a middle-aged spinster.
Still, you might easily have been one. I know some charming girls in
Boston who have gone that path."

"So do I," soberly. "Some of them so much more charming than some of my
married friends that I don't quite get the idea. Some of Nature's
blunders, I suppose. Well, shall we start?"

"We'd better. I think it's going to b