he
other lady. I'll be a model husband and father, sure as you're standing
there. Don't you think I won't. Smile if you want to--it's so. I'll have
my garden. I'll be friendly with my neighbors. You can come over then
and help us put the kids to bed."

"Oh, Lord! This is a new bug now! We'll have the vine-covered cot idea
for a while, anyhow."

"Oh, all right. Scoff if you want to. You'll see."

Time went by. He was doing all the things I have indicated, living in a
kind of whirl of life. At the same time, from time to time, he would
come back to this thought. Once, it is true, I thought it was all over
with the little yellow-haired girl in Philadelphia. He talked of her
occasionally, but less and less. Out on the golf links near Passaic he
met another girl, one of a group that flourished there. I met her. She
was not unpleasing, a bit sensuous, rather attractive in dress and
manners, not very well informed, but gay, clever, up-to-date; such a
girl as would pass among other women as fairly satisfactory.

For a time Peter seemed greatly attracted to her. She danced, played a
little, was fair at golf and tennis, and she was, or pretended to be,
intensely interested in him. He confessed at last that he believed he
was in love with her.

"So it's all day with Philadelphia, is it?" I asked.

"It's a shame," he replied, "but I'm afraid so. I'm having a hell of a
time with myself, my alleged conscience, I tell you."

I heard little more about it. He had a fad for collecting rings at this
time, a whole casket full, like a Hindu prince, and he told me once he
was giving her her choice of them.

Suddenly he announced that it was "all off" and that he was going to
marry the maid of Philadelphia. He had thrown the solitaire engagement
ring he had given her down a sewer! At first he would confess nothing as
to the reason or the details, but being so close to me it eventually
came out. Apparently, to the others as to myself, he had talked much of
his simple home plans, his future children--the good citizen idea. He
had talked it to his new love also, and she had sympathized and agreed.
Yet one day, after he had endowed her with the engagement ring, some
one, a member of the golf club, came and revealed a tale. The girl was
not "straight." She had been, mayhap was even then, "intimate" with
other men--one anyhow. She was in love with Peter well enough, as she
insisted afterward, and willing to undertake the life he suggested,