ibe.

"Well, then, afterward we will go abroad."

"Don't you like this country?" the girl asked, all the stars and stripes
fluttering in her voice, and in a tone which one might use in reciting,
"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead?"

"I think," he answered, apologetically, "that I do like this country. It
is a great country. But New York is not a great city, at least not to my
thinking. Collectively it is great, I admit, but individually not, and
that is to me the precise difference between it and Paris. Collectively
the French amount to little, individually it is otherwise."

"But you told me once that Paris was tiresome."

"I was not there with you. And should it become so when we are there
together, we have the whole world to choose from. In Germany we can have
the middle ages over again. In London we can get the flush of the
nineteenth century. There is all of Italy, from the lakes to Naples. We
can take a doge's palace in Venice, or a Caesar's villa on the Baia. With
a dahabieh we could float down into the dawn of history. You would look
well in a dahabieh, Viola."

"As Aida?"

"Better. And that reminds me, Viola; tell me, you will give up all
thought of the stage, will you not?"

"How foolish you are. Fancy Mrs. Tristrem Varick before the footlights.
There are careers open to a girl that the acceptance of another's name
must close. And the stage is one of them. I should have adopted it long
ago, had it not been for mother. She seems to think that a Raritan--but
there, you know what mothers are. Now, of course, I shall give it up.
Besides, Italian opera is out of fashion. And even if it were otherwise,
have I not now a lord, a master, whom I must obey?"

Her eyes looked anything but obedience, yet her voice was melodious with
caresses.

And so they sat and talked and made their plans, until it was long past
the conventional hour, and Tristrem felt that he should go. He had been
afloat in unnavigated seas of happiness, but still in his heart he felt
the burn of a red, round wound. The lie that Weldon had told smarted
still, yet with serener spirit he thought there might be some
unexplained excuse.

"Tell me," he asked, as he was about to leave, "what was it Weldon
said?"

Miss Raritan looked at him, and hesitated before she spoke. Then
catching his face in her two hands she drew it to her own.

"He said you were a goose," she whispered, and touched her lips to his.

With this answer Tristrem