r love. They marry
for position, or power, or money, when they do marry. Think of all
the glorious creatures he meets every day--women whose hair, and
finger-nails and teeth and skin are a religion; women whose clothes are
a fine art; women who are free to care only for themselves; to rest,
to enjoy, to hear delightful music, and read charming books, and eat
delicious food. He doesn't really care about you, with your rumpled
blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful
linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from
the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end
of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But you didn't laugh. You
rubbed it off, furiously, and you wanted to cry. Cry! You, Dawn O'Hara!
Begorra! 'Tis losin' your sense av humor you're after doin'! Get to
work."

After which I would fall upon the book in a furious, futile fashion,
writing many incoherent, irrelevant paragraphs which I knew would be
cast aside as worthless on the sane and reasoning to-morrow.

Oh, it had been easy enough to talk of love in a lofty, superior
impersonal way that New Year's day. Just the luxury of speaking of it at
all, after those weeks of repression, sufficed. But it is not so easy to
be impersonal and lofty when the touch of a coat sleeve against your arm
sends little prickling, tingling shivers racing madly through thousands
of too taut nerves. It is not so easy to force the mind and tongue into
safe, sane channels when they are forever threatening to rush together
in an overwhelming torrent that will carry misery and destruction in its
wake. Invariably we talk with feverish earnestness about the book; about
my work at the office; about Ernst's profession, with its wonderful
growth; about Norah, and Max and the Spalpeens, and the home; about the
latest news; about the weather; about Peter Orme--and then silence.

At our last meeting things took a new and startling turn. So startling,
so full of temptation and happiness-that-must-not-be, that I resolved to
forbid myself the pain and joy of being, near him until I could be quite
sure that my grip on Dawn O'Hara was firm, unshakable and lasting.

Von Gerhard sports a motor-car, a rakish little craft, built long and
low, with racing lines, and a green complexion, and a nose that cuts
through the air like the prow of a swift boat through water. Von Gerhard
had promised me a spin in it on the first mil