promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you the
bigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?"

She would not let her hand relax to his.

"I hate this town," she said.

"There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there."

"Faugh!"

"Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis."

"No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even little
metropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spenders
and mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, and
machine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!"

"And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester.
You're beautiful."

"That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I've
got a pink-crepe-de-Chine soul. Pink crepe de Chine--you hear?"

He sat back on his heels.

"It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with that
salesman from New York?"

"Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up High
Street, evenings!"

"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?"

"Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?"

"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?"

"Well, of all the nerve!"

But it was.

* * * * *

The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-striped
soft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter the
story. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, or
whatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer.

Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic,
manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattel
of one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island,
vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs but
of the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations.

You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was an
apartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated on
the windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type from
the pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine,
mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, to
the pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with a
small mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded with
paper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom with
a sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing s