ould have had for the asking; and I
vow that I thought I would ask her--I actually was as far gone as that;
I actually said to myself, I'd hang about her a week or two, and then
propose. You'll hardly believe it, but I did. Watched her presented;
such grace, such a smile, such a divine lift of the lashes. I was really
in love, and with a girl who would marry me! I was never so near a fatal
thing in my life----"

"Well?" asked the Seraph, pausing to listen till he let the ice in his
sherry-cobbler melt away. When you have been so near breaking your neck
down the Matrimonial Matterhorn, it is painfully interesting to hear how
your friend escaped the same risks of descent.

"Well," resumed Bertie, "I was very near it. I did nothing but watch
her; she saw me, and I felt she was as flattered and as touched as she
ought to be. She blushed most enchantingly; just enough, you know; she
was conscious I followed her; I contrived to get close to her as she
passed out, so close that I could see those exquisite eyes lighten and
gleam, those exquisite lips part with a sigh, that beautiful face beam
with the sunshine of a radiant smile. It was the dawn of love I had
taught her! I pressed nearer and nearer, and I caught her soft whisper
as she leaned to her mother: 'Mamma, I'm so hungry! I could eat a
whole chicken!' The sigh, the smile, the blush, the light, were for
her dinner--not for me! The spell was broken forever. A girl whom I had
looked at could think of wings and merry-thoughts and white sauce! I
have never been near a proposal again."

The Seraph, with the clarion roll of his gay laughter, flung a hautboy
at him.

"Hang you, Beauty! If I didn't think you were going to tell one how you
really got out of a serious thing; it is so awfully difficult to keep
clear of them nowadays. Those before-dinner teas are only just so many
new traps! What became of her--eh?"

"She married a Scotch laird and became socially extinct, somewhere among
the Hebrides. Served her right," murmured Cecil sententiously. "Only
think what she lost just through hungering for a chicken; if I
hadn't proposed for her,--for one hardly keeps the screw up to such
self-sacrifice as that when one is cool the next morning,--I would have
made her the fashion!"

With which masterly description in one phrase of all he could have done
for the ill-starred debutante who had been hungry in the wrong place,
Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen o