ng to write a play?"

That was, it seems, what Elise had had in mind for him from the
beginning--a great play!

"She wouldn't even, have a honeymoon"--Jimmie's arm was around her; "she
brought me here, and got this room ready the first thing."

"Well, he mustn't be wasting time," said Elise, "must he? Jimmie's
rather wonderful, isn't he?"

They seemed a pair of babies as they stood there together. Elise had on
a childish one-piece pink frock, with sleeves above the elbow, and an
organdie sash. Yet, intuitively, the truth came to me--she was ages
older than Jimmie in spite of her twenty years to his twenty-four. Here
was no Juliet, flaming to the moon--no mistress whose steed would gallop
by wind-swept roads to midnight trysts. Here was, rather, the cool blood
that had sacrificed a honeymoon--_and, oh, to honeymoon with Jimmie
Harding_!--for the sake of an ambitious future.

She was telling us about it "We can always have a honeymoon, Jimmie and
I. Some day, when he is famous, we'll have it. But now we must not."

"I picked out the place"--Jimmie was eager--"a dip in the hills, and big
pines--And then Elise wouldn't."

We went in to lunch after that. The table was lovely and the food
delicious. There was batter-bread, I remember, and an omelette, and peas
from the garden.

Duncan Street and I talked all the way home of Jimmie and his wife. He
didn't agree with me in the least about Elise. "She'll be the making of
him. Such wives always are."

But I held that he would lose something,--that he would not be the same
Jimmie.

* * * * *

Jimmie wrote plays and plays. In between he wrote pot-boiling books. The
pot-boilers were needed, because none of his plays were accepted. He
used to stop in our office and joke about it.

"If it wasn't for Elise's faith in me, Miss Standish, I should think
myself a poor stick. Of course, I can make money enough with my books
and short stuff to keep things going, but it isn't just money that
either of us is after."

Except when Jimmie came into the office we saw very little of him. Elise
gathered about her the men and women who would count in Jimmie's future.
The week-ends in the still old house drew not a few famous folk who
loathed the commonplaceness of convivial atmospheres. Elise had
old-fashioned flowers in her garden, delectable food, a library of old
books. It was a heavenly change for those who were tired of cocktail
parties, bridge-mad