aside the paper. "I have known that for some time."

"Besides, it is rude to refuse to call me when I have asked you to do
so. It makes me ridiculous in the eyes of your employees."

Recalling the shift of offices Steve suppressed a smile. "It was
nothing important, Bea, and I am mighty busy. Your father never had
time to play; he worked a great deal harder than I have worked."

"I can't help that. You must not expect me to be a little stay-at-home.
You knew that before we were even engaged. Besides, I'm no child----"

"No, but you act like one." He spoke almost before he thought. "You
are a woman nearly twenty-six years old, yet you haven't the poise of
girls eighteen that I have known. Still, they were farm or working
girls. I've sometimes wondered what it is that makes you and your
friends always seem so childish and naive--at times. Aren't you ever
going to grow up--any of you?"

"Do you want a pack of old women?" she demanded. "How can you find
fault with my friends? You seem to forget how splendidly they have
treated you."

A cave man must be muzzled, handcuffed, and Under the anaesthetic of
unreality and indifference to be a satisfactory husband for a modern
Gorgeous Girl.

"Why shouldn't they treat me splendidly? I have never robbed or
maltreated any of them. Tell me something. It is time we talked
seriously. We can't exist on the cream-puff kind of conversation. What
in the world has your way of going through these finishing schools
done for you?"

The dove-coloured eyes flickered angrily. "I had a terribly good
time," she began. "Besides, it's the proper thing--girls don't come
out at twenty and marry off and let that be the end of it. You really
have a much better time now if you wait until you are twenty-five, and
then you somehow have learned how to be a girl for an indefinite
period. As for the finishing school in America--well, we had a
wonderful sorority."

"I've met college women who were clear-headed persons deserving the
best and usually attaining it--but I've never taken a microscope to
the sort of women playing the game from the froth end. I'm wondering
what your ideas were."

"You visited me--you met my friends--my chaperons--you wrote me each
day."

"I was in love and busy making my fortune. I was as shy as a
backwoods product--you know that--and afraid you would be carried off
by someone else before I could come up to the sum your father demanded
of me. I have nothing but a hazy i