and pleasant, scented
and soft, in woman. Osborn felt, as many a man has done and will do
again, all memories, all fidelity slipping from him, in the lure of
the hour. Leaning forward, he said imperatively:

"I'll have to write every day. You'll answer me, won't you?"

"Of course I will, you exacting boy."

In a very low voice he went on:

"I want to have you all to myself till to-morrow--till I've got to
leave you. It would be heaven; but--"

Roselle Dates was of that talented community of stupid women who
understand and manipulate life through their super-instinct of sex
merely; who know how to take all and give nothing; suckers of life and
never feeders. She looked at him and sighed and smiled, and shook her
head, and touching his hand, whispered:

"But that's impossible. It isn't often a woman makes a friend like
you. Let it last a little longer, there's a dear boy."

"I'm sorry," said Osborn. "I suppose we're all beasts."

She sighed again. "Every inch of life is snared, for women. In a
profession like mine you watch each step. My goodness, you do! Or
you'd fall into one of the traps."

"Isn't it ever worth while falling in?"

She refused to answer. Becoming suddenly capricious with the caprice
that is the armour of her kind, she wished to be taken home. After he
had left her, he walked the streets moodily for an hour before going
in himself.

He had to pack for an early start next morning. In a bedroom where a
prince might have slept, he threw himself into an easychair and
brooded. Roselle became more than ever desirable, as he imagined her,
sitting in that shaded tea room, her fur coat opened and thrown back
to show the fragile corsage underneath. She was romance; the fairy
tale, which he had read and mislaid, found again. Putting his hand up,
he pulled out his wife's letter, and read it again cursorily before
casting it into the wastepaper basket.

How dull it was! What a lack of sparkle and spontaneity it showed!
Something seemed to happen to women after marriage, making them
prosaic; growing little nagging consciences in them; egging them on to
a perpetual striving with things that were damned tiresome. And the
letter that he would write back would be just as constrained; there
would be no joy in the writing of it as there would be writing the
letters that would be sent to Roselle.

* * * * *

"MY DEAR OSBORN" (Marie wrote), "Thank you for your letter. You are