OULD
marry Stanley, when he's free, as he would be before very long, if I
suggested it. Yes, I could marry him."

"Could you?" observed he.

"Doesn't he love me?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Then why do you say he would not marry me?" demanded she.

"Did I say that?"

"You insinuated it. You suggested that there was a doubt."

"Then, there is no doubt?"

"Yes, there is," she cried angrily. "You won't let me enjoy the least
bit of a delusion. He might marry me if I were famous. But as I am
now-- He's an inbred snob. He can't help it. He simply couldn't
marry a woman in my position. But you're overlooking one thing--that
_I_ would not marry HIM."

"That's unimportant, if true," said Keith.

"You don't believe it?"

"I don't care anything about it, my dear lady," said Keith. "Have you
got time to waste in thinking about how much I am in love with you?
What a womanly woman you are, to be sure. Your true woman, you know,
never thinks of anything but love--not how much she loves, but how much
she is loved."

"Be careful!" she warned. "Some day you'll go too far in saying
outrageous things to me."

"And then?" said he smilingly.

"You care nothing for our friendship?"

"The experiment is the only interest I have in you," replied he.

"That is not true," said she. "You have always liked me. That's why
you looked up my hus-- General Siddall and got ready for him. That's
why you saved me to-day. You are a very tender-hearted and generous
man--and you hide it as you do everything else about yourself."

He was looking off into space from the depths of the easy chair, a
mocking smile on his classical, impassive face.

"What puzzles me," she went on, "is why you interest yourself in as
vain and shallow and vacillating a woman as I am. You don't care for
my looks--and that's all there is to me."

"Don't pause to be contradicted," said he.

She was in a fine humor now. "You might at least have said I was up to
the female average, for I am. What have they got to offer a man but
their looks? Do you know why I despise men?"

"Do you?"

"I do. And it's because they put up with women as much as they
do--spend so much money on them, listen to their chatter, admire their
ridiculous clothes. Oh, I understand why. I've learned that. And I
can imagine myself putting up with anything in some one man I happened
to fancy strongly. But men are foolish about the whole sex--or all of
them that have a shadow of