edwell left cards and then asked her
to dinner, and received an amiable regret for her pains. No girl can
afford to decline invitations from Janet, even if her excuse is a club
meeting.

"And two or three other women at the Red Cross have asked her to lunch
at the Colony Club, and have made advances to her on Leila Vance's
account, but she hasn't responded. Now, you know a girl isn't going to
get on by politely ignoring the advances of such women. But she
doesn't even appear to be aware of their importance."

"Why don't you ask her to something?" suggested her husband.

"I did," she said, a little sharply. "I asked her and Leila Vance to
dine with us. I intended to ask Elorn, too, and let Jim realise the
difference if he isn't already too blind to see."

"Did she decline?"

"She did," said Helen curtly.

"Why?"

"It happened that she had asked somebody to dine with her that
evening. And I have a horrid suspicion it was Jim. If it was, she
could have postponed it. Of course it was a valid excuse, but it
annoyed me to have her decline. That's what I tell you, James, she has
a most disturbing habit of declining overtures from everybody--even
from----"

Helen checked herself, looked at her husband with an odd smile, in
which there was no mirth; then:

"You probably are not aware of it, dear, but that girl has also
declined Jim's overtures."

"Jim's what?"

"Invitation."

"Invitation to do what?"

"Marry him."

Shotwell Senior turned very red.

"The devil she did! How do you know?"

"Jim told me."

"That she turned him down?"

"She declined to marry him."

Her husband seemed unable to grasp such a fact. Never had it occurred
to Shotwell Senior that any living, human girl could decline such an
invitation from his only son.

After a painful silence: "Well," he said in a perplexed and mortified
voice, "she certainly seems to be, as you say, a most unusual girl....
But--if it's settled--why do you continue to worry, Helen?"

"Because Jim is very deeply in love with her.... And I'm sore at
heart."

"Hard hit, is he?"

"Very unhappy."

Shotwell Senior reddened again: "He'll have to face it," he said....
"But that girl seems to be a fool!"

"I--wonder."

"What do you mean?"

"A girl may change her mind." She lifted her head and looked with sad
humour at her husband, whom she also had kept dangling for a while.
Then:

"James, dear, our son _is_ as fine as we think him. But he's just a
sple