e not married yet. For all that, if Flo insisted, he supposed it
would have to be, though there had been no arrangement in so many
binding words. He was inclined to let her have to insist, however; and
if she did--why, life would be ever after the making the best of a bad
job. Not a healthy condition of love, it will be perceived.

As they were nearing the Wintons' again, Henry thawed a little.

"Wouldn't you really like to live in London, Flo?" he said.

"Perhaps, and perhaps not. No doubt I would. But what I don't like--and
I may as well be frank about it--is living here and you in London."

"Ah, but that need not be for long," Henry returned kindly.

"So you say. But one never knows."

She was honestly unhappy at the idea of his leaving her, and Henry, when
he understood this, felt his heart rise a little in sympathy--the
swelling had gone down since we last saw them together. But he did not
guess that he was pleased rather by the flattering thought that she
would miss him, than softened by the sentiment of leaving her behind
him.

"After all," he said, "I'm not away yet."

"It's that horrid Puddy--what-you-call-him--that's to blame for stuffing
your head with ideas of throwing up such a good post as you have. Take
my advice, Henry, stay where you are, for a while at any rate. There's a
dear, good fellow!"

But the dear, good fellow kissed Flo somewhat frigidly when he parted
from her that night, and decided that Adrian Grant was right in his
estimate of women as creatures who, in the mass, had no ideas beyond
social comfort, no ambition higher than "society," and who were only
interested in the projects of men to the extent these might advance
their own selfish desires.

"She said I never considered her. By Jove, I could wish I did not,"
Henry reflected, biting his moustache savagely in his mood of
discontent. "I wonder what P. would think of her?"

When a man wonders what another would think of his sweetheart it is a
cloudy day for the latter. When the man hesitates, the woman is lost.

Mr. P. had never encountered Miss Winton; but a few days after the
frosty episode in her love-story, Henry and his friend met Flo in the
market-place, and stopping, she was introduced. This not without qualms
to Henry, who could scarce avoid the meeting, and was yet loth to
present his friend to Flo, in view of her expressed dislike for him. But
the ready courtesy and charming manner of the author-musician seemed to
pl