ld make a
complete success of so doing. Whereas even now Beatrice merely
regarded Gay as essential to complete her defeat.

When she reached home, in company with Gay, her aunt, the maid, and an
armful of flowers, the attendant told them her father was dead. He had
had a bad turn in the early morning--no pain--just drifted off. Well,
the only intelligible things he had said were--should he repeat them
now? Well, the two words he had said over and over again were
"Steve--Hannah--Hannah--Steve."

So the cloth-of-gold wedding with the sunken-garden setting was
changed for a wedding at twilight in the conservatory, Beatrice
dressed in shimmery mauve out of memory to dear papa!

* * * * *

"You have renounced your economic independence and you are now
approaching the legal-vassal stage," Steve warned Mary as they viewed
the rooms of the new brown house. "Do you know what it all means?"

"No; probably that is why we women do so," she retorted. "Luke says
you are bully and everything is fino--and I set quite a store by
Luke's opinions."

"You'll have green-plush and golden-oak people call on you, I'm
afraid, and a few who run to Sheraton and crystal goblets. There will
be funny entertainments and dinner parties where the hostess fries the
steak and then removes her apron to display her best silk gown."

"I am prepared. And the maid will leave us before the month is over
and I shall be her understudy. Well, I can. That is something."

"I'm not going to ask permission to smoke--I'm going to sprawl in all
the chairs and puff away at my leisure."

"Do. I'll try to remember it is good for moths."

"Mary, are you satisfied?" he asked, wistfully.

"Of course. It never does to have it all perfect--to the last detail
of the wallpaper designs. That never lasts."

She went to lay her head on his shoulder for a brief second, almost
boyishly darting away and running upstairs to see to some detail in
which Steve was not concerned.

He went to the side doorway of the house to look out at the other
houses and yards--pleasant, livable dwellings without romantic
construction or extravagant details--the homes of the people who keep
the world moving and mostly turning to the right.

He felt he had earned this brown house--and the woman who was upstairs
examining the linen-closet capacity. He had neither stolen nor
bargained for either. It was true there was a tinge of regret, like a
calm