" replied the bachelor, with dignified scorn, "is too much--in a
man's eyes."

The widow laughed and stopped rubbing her nose.

"But it isn't in his eyes," she protested, "if it is put on so
artistically that he doesn't see it. Getting it on straight is such an
art!" and the widow sighed.

"Black art, you mean," exclaimed the bachelor disgustedly. "A made-up
woman is like paste jewelry and imitation bric-a-brac. She looks cheap
and unsubstantial and as though she wouldn't wear well. Even granting
that you aren't half good enough for us----"

"What!"

"And that you don't come up to our standards----"

The widow dropped her embroidery hoop and sat up with blazing eyes.

"You flatter yourself, Mr. Travers!"

"No, I don't!" retorted the bachelor. "It's you who flatter us, when you
think it necessary to plaster over your defects and put additions on
your figures and rouge on your cheeks and frills on your manners. As a
matter of fact," he added decisively, "a man's ideal is a natural woman
with a natural complexion and natural hair and natural ways and natural
self-respect."

The widow sighed and took up her embroidery hoop again.

"I used to think so, too," she said sadly.

The bachelor lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Before I discovered," she explained, "that it was just as often a
woman with butter-colored hair and a tailor-made figure and a 'past' and
a manufactured 'bloom of health.' The truth is," she concluded, stabbing
her needle very carefully into the centre of an unhealthy looking green
silk rose, "that no two men admire the same woman, and no one man
admires the same thing in two women. Now, there's Miss Gunning, who
wears a sweater and says 'damn' and is perfectly natural and
self-respecting and----"

"No man gets ecstatic over a bad imitation of himself!" expostulated the
bachelor.

"Then why," said the widow, laying down her needle and fixing the
bachelor with a glittering eye, "do you spend so much time on the golf
links, and out driving and hunting and walking with her?"

"Because," explained the bachelor, meekly, "she sometimes hits the ball,
and she can sit in her saddle without being tied there, and she doesn't
grab the reins nor call a 'hoof' a 'paw.' But," he added fervently, "I'd
take my hat and run if she asked me to spend my life with her."

"Oh, well," the widow tossed her head independently. "She won't. Miss
Gunning can take care of herself."

"That's just it!" pursued the