"To talk to you--I want you to listen to my plan. You are to come with
me to New York for the fall opera and all the theatres--oh, along in
November. It's terribly dull here. Jill Briggs and her husband and
some of the others are going, and we can take rooms at the Astor and
all be together and have a wonderful time!"

"I'd rather stay in our own home," he pleaded. "It's such fun to have
a real home. We can entertain, you know. Besides, I'm the worker and
you are the player, and I don't understand your sort of life any more
than you can understand mine. So you must play and let me look on--and
love me, that's all I'll ever ask."

"You're a dear," was his reward; "but we'll go to New York?"

"I'll have to take you down and leave you--I'm needed at the office."

"But I'd be the odd one--I'd have to have a partner. Steve, dear, you
don't have to grub. When we were engaged you always had time for me."

"Because you had so little for me! And so I always shall have time for
you," the anaesthesia causing his decision. "Besides, those were
courtship days--and I wasn't quite so sure of you, which is the way of
all men." He kissed her hair gently.

She drew away and rearranged a lock. "I don't want a husband who won't
play with me."

"We'll fix it all right, don't worry. Now was that all you wanted?"

"I want you to stay home and go driving with me. I want you to call on
some people--and look at a new cellaret I'd like to buy. It is
expensive, but no one else would have one anywhere near as charming.
I need you this afternoon--you're so calm and strong, and my head
aches. I'm always tired."

"Yet you never work," he said, almost unconsciously.

"My dear boy, society is the hardest work in the world. I'm simply
dragged to a frazzle by the end of the season. Besides, there is all
my war work and my clubs and my charities. And I've just promised to
take an advanced course in domestic science."

"I see," Steve said, meekly.

"I think it is the duty of rich women to know all about frying things
as well as eating them," she said, as she took a third caramel.

"Quite true. Having money isn't always keeping it"

"Oh, papa has loads of money--enough for all of us," she remarked,
easily. "It isn't that. I'd never cook if I were poor, anyway; that
would be the last thing I'd ever dream of doing. It's fun to go to the
domestic-science class as long as all my set go. Well--will you be a
nice angel-man and stay home to amuse yo