vision of Gerty's slender, almost boyish figure, with its daring
carriage, rose before Kemper, and he bit back the cynical laugh upon his
lips. Did one require, after all, a certain restraint in life, a
cultured abstinence before one could really appreciate the finer flavour
of the aesthetic taste? His old aversion to marriage returned to him as
he looked at Perry, sunk in his domestic satiety, and his exhilaration
of a moment ago gave place to a corresponding degree of depression. He
had done the irrevocable thing, and, as usual, it was no sooner
irrevocable than the joyous seduction of it fled from his fancy.
Marriage was utterly repugnant to him, and yet he knew not only that
there was no withdrawing from his position, but that he would not wish
to withdraw himself if he had the power. The instant that the
possibility of losing Laura occurred to him, he felt again the full,
resurgent wave of his desire. He wanted her, and if to marry her was the
one way to possess her, then--the devil take it--marry her he would!

A tinted note was brought to Perry Bridewell, who, after reading it, sat
twirling it between his fingers with a bored and discontented look on
his handsome florid face.

"Take my advice, and when you get clear of an affair, keep out," he
remarked, in a disgusted voice. "By Jove, I'm sometimes tempted to wish
that I were as cold blooded as old Adams."

"Old Adams?" Kemper repeated the name, with a quickened interest. "Well,
I'd hardly envy him his experience with the sex," he exclaimed.

"You would if you saw him--he simply never thinks about a woman so far
as I know, and at least he's well enough rid of his wife, at last. She's
on Brady's hands, thank heaven!"

Kemper shrugged his shoulders. "It serves her right, I suppose, but I
shouldn't care to be on Brady's hands, that's all."

"Oh, he'll chuck her presently, you'll see."

"And afterward--" Kemper was leaning over Perry while he critically
examined a pretty woman who was passing under the window.

"There's no afterward," laughed Perry; "you know how such women end."

As he glanced at the note again, the bored and discontented look came
back upon his face, and he tore the envelope carelessly across and flung
it with a jerk into the waste basket.

"Pshaw! it's all a confounded nuisance--the whole business of sex," he
remarked as he rose to his feet. Then while the disgust still lingered
in his expression, a servant entered and handed him a seco