idn't."

"Billy wants to marry her, and he has shocked her delicate feelings by
suggesting it to her."

"I imagine you have a good deal to do with her feelings on the
subject," Dick said gloomily. "I suppose at heart you don't believe in
marriage, or think you don't and you've communicated the poison to
Caroline."

"I've done nothing of the kind," Nancy insisted warmly. "I do believe
in marriage with all my heart. I think the greatest service any woman
can render her kind in this mix-up age is to marry one man and make
that marriage work by taking proper scientific care of him and his
children."

"This is news to me," Dick said. "I thought that _you_ thought that
the greatest service a woman could do was to run Outside Inn, and
stuff all the derelicts with calories."

"That's a service, too."

"Sure."

They were out beyond the stately decay of the up-town drive, with its
crumbling mansions and the disheveled lawns surrounding them, beyond
the view of the most picturesque river in the world, though,
comparatively speaking, the least regarded, covering the prosaic
stretch of dusty road between Van Courtland Park and the town of
Yonkers.

"I like the _Bois_ better," Sheila said, "but I like Central Park
better than the _Champs Elysees_. In Paris the children are not so gay
as the grown-up people. Here it is the grown-up people who are without
smiles on the streets."

"Why is that, Dick?" Nancy asked.

"That's always true of the maturer races, the gaiety of the French is
appreciative enthusiasm,--if I may invent a phrase. The children
haven't developed it."

"I would like to have my hand held, Monsieur Dick," Sheila announced.
"I always feel homesick when I think about Paris. I was so contente
and so _malheureuse_ there."

"Why were you unhappy, sweetest?" Nancy asked.

"My father says I am never to speak of those things, and so I
don't--even to Miss Dear, my _bien aimee_."

Dick lifted Sheila into his lap, he took the hand that still clung to
Nancy's in his warm palm, and held them both there caressingly.

"My _bien aimee_," he said softly.

Beyond the town a more gracious and magnificent country revealed
itself; lovely homes set high on sweeping terraces, private parks and
gardens and luxuriant estates, all in a blaze of October radiance with
the glorious pigments of the season.

"Isn't it time to go back?" Nancy asked.

"Not yet," Dick said. "I want to show you something. There's an old
place h