n the platform until the train starts," suggested
Honora, desperately. "Oh, Howard, the shades are up! I'm sure I saw some
one looking in!"

He laughed. But there was a light in his eyes that frightened her, and
she deemed his laughter out of place. Was he, after all, an utterly
different man than what she had thought him? Still laughing, he held to
her wrist with one hand, and with the other pulled down the shades.

"This is good enough for me," he said. "At last--at last," he whispered,
"all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself! Do you love me
just a little, Honora?"

"Of course I do," she faltered, still struggling, her face burning as
from a fire.

"Then what's the matter?" he demanded.

"I don't know--I want air. Howard, please let me go. It's-it's so hot
inhere. You must let me go."

Her release, she felt afterwards, was due less to a physical than a
mental effort. She seemed suddenly to have cowed him, and his resistance
became enfeebled. She broke from him, and opened the door, and reached
the cement platform and the cold air. When he joined her, there was
something jokingly apologetic about his manner, and he was smoking a
cigarette; and she could not help thinking that she would have respected
him more if he had held her.

"Women beat me," he said. "They're the most erratic stock in the market."

It is worthy of remark how soon the human, and especially the feminine
brain adjusts itself to new conditions. In a day or two life became real
again, or rather romantic.

For the American husband in his proper place is an auxiliary who makes
all things possible. His ability to "get things done," before it ceases
to be a novelty, is a quality to be admired. Honora admired. An
intimacy--if the word be not too strong--sprang up between them. They
wandered through the quaint streets of New Orleans, that most foreign of
American cities, searching out the tumbledown French houses; and Honora
was never tired of imagining the romances and tragedies which must have
taken place in them. The new scenes excited her,--the quaint cafes with
their delicious, peppery Creole cooking,--and she would sit talking for a
quarter of an hour at a time with Alphonse, who outdid himself to please
the palate of a lady with such allure. He called her "Madame"; but well
he knew, this student of human kind, that the title had not been of long
duration.

Madame came from New York, without doubt? such was one of his question