"WHAT rhymes with 'matrimony'?" inquired the widow, taking her pencil out of her mouth and looking up thoughtfully through the fringes of her pompadour.
"Money," responded the bachelor promptly, as he flung himself down on the grass beside her and proceeded to study her profile through the shadows of the maple leaves.
The widow tilted her chin scornfully.
"I suppose they do sound alike," she condescended, "but I am making a poem; and there is no poetical harmony in the combination."
"There is no harmony at all without it," remarked the bachelor shortly. "But how on earth can you make a poem out of matrimony?"
"Some people do," replied the widow loftily.
"On paper!" sneered the bachelor. "On paper they make poems of death and babies and railroad accidents and health foods. But in real life matrimony isn't a poem; it's more like a declaration of war, or an itemized expense account, or a census report, or a cold business proposition."
The widow bit the end of her pencil and laid aside her paper. If the bachelor could have caught a glimpse of her eyes beneath the lowered lashes he might not have gone on; but he was studying the sky through the maple leaves.
"It's a beautiful business proposition," he added. "A magnificent money making scheme, a——"
The bachelor's eyes had dropped to the widow's and he stopped short.
"Go on," she remarked in a cold, sweet voice that trickled down his back.
"Oh, well," he protested lamely, "when you marry for money you generally get it, don't you? But when you marry for love—it's like putting your last dollar on a long shot."
"If you mean there's a delightful uncertainty about it?" began the widow.
"There's nothing half so delightful," declared the bachelor, "as betting on a sure thing. Now, the man or woman who marries for money——"
"Earns it," broke in the widow fervently. "Earns it by the sweat of the brow. The man who marries a woman for her money is a white slave, a bond servant, a travesty on manhood. For every dollar he receives he gives a full equivalent in self-respect and independence, and all the things dearest to a real man."
"A real man," remarked the bachelor, taking out his pipe and lighting it, "wouldn't marry a woman for her money. It's woman to whom marriage presents the alluring financial prospect."
"Oh, I don't know," responded the widow, crossing her arms behind her head and leaning thoughtfully against the tree at her back. "In these days of typewriting and stenography and manicuring and trainednursing, matrimony offers about the poorest returns, from a business standpoint, of any feminine occupation—the longest hours, the hardest work, the greatest drain on your patience, the most exacting master and the smallest pay, to say nothing of no holidays and not even an evening off."
"Nor a chance to 'give notice' if you don't like your job," added the bachelor sympathetically.
"If the average business man," went on the widow, ignoring the interruption, "demanded half of his stenographer that he demands of his wife he couldn't keep her three hours."
"And yet," remarked the bachelor, pulling on his pipe meditatively, "the average stenographer is only tooglad to exchange her position for that of wife whenever she gets——"
The jangle of gold bangles, as the widow brought her arms down from behind her head and sat up straight, interrupted his speech.
"Whenever she gets——"
The widow picked up her ruffles and started to rise.
"Whenever she gets—ready," finished the bachelor quickly.
The widow sat down again and leaned back against the tree.
"How perfectly you illustrate my point," she remarked sweetly.
"Oh," said the bachelor, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "did you have a point?"
"That marriage is something higher and finer than a business proposition, Mr. Travers, and thatthere are lots of reasons for marrying besides financial ones."
"Oh, yes," agreed the bachelor, "there is folly and feminine coercion and because you can't get out of it, and——"
"As for marriage as a money affair," pursued the widow without waiting, "it's just the money side of it that causes all the squabbles and unhappiness. If they've got it, they are always quarreling over it and if they haven't got it they are always quarreling for it. The Castellanes and Marlboroughs who fight over their bills and their debts aren't any happier than the Murphys and the Hooligans who fight over the price of a pint of beer. It's just as difficult to know what to do with money when you've got it as it is to knowwhat to do without it when you haven't got it; and a million dollars between husband and wife is a bigger gulf than a $10 a week salary. It's not a question of the amount of money, but the question of who shall spend it that makes all the trouble."
"But don't you see," argued the bachelor, sitting up suddenly and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "that all that would be eliminated if people would make marriage a business proposition? For instance, if two people would discuss the situation rationally and make the terms before marriage; if the man would state the services he requires and the woman would demand the compensation she thinks she deserves——"
"Ugh!" shuddered the widow, putting her hands over her eyes,"that would be like writing your epitaph and choosing the style of your coffin."
"And every man," pursued the bachelor, "would be willing to give his wife her board and room and a salary adequate to her services and to his income——"
"And to let her eat with the family," jeered the widow.
"Well," finished the bachelor, "then marriage wouldn't offer the poorest returns in the professional market. And, besides," he added, "there would be fewer wives sitting about in apartment hotels holding their hands and ordering the bellboys around, while their husbands are down town fretting and struggling themselves into bankruptcy; and fewer husbands spending their nightsand their money out with the boys, while their wives are bending over the cook stove and the sewing machine, trying to make ends meet on nothing a year."
"But that," cried the widow, taking her hands down from her eyes, "would mean spending your courtship talking stocks and bonds and dividends!"
"And the rest of your life forgetting them and talking love," declared the bachelor, triumphantly.
The widow looked up speculatively.
"Well—perhaps," she acquiesced, "if courtship were more of a business proposition marriage would be less of a failure. Anyhow, you'd know in advance just what a manconsidered you worth in dollars and cents."
"And you'd eliminate all the uncertainty," added the bachelor.
"And the chance of having to beg for your carfare and pin money."
"And of having to go bankrupt for matinee tickets and Easter hats."
"And of being asked what you did with your allowance."
"Or of how you acquired your breath or lost your watch."
"The trouble is," sighed the widow, "that no man would ever be broad enough or generous enough to make such a proposition."
"And no woman would ever be sensible enough to listen to it."
"Nonsense. Any woman would. It's just the sort of thing we've been longing for."
"Well," said the bachelor, turning on his back and looking up at the widow speculatively, "let me see—you could have the violet room."
"What!" exclaimed the widow.
"It's got a good south view," protested the bachelor, "and besides it's not over the kitchen."
"What on earth do you mean?" The widow sat up straight and her bangles jingled warningly.
"And you could have Saturday and Wednesday evenings out. Those are my club nights."
"How dare you!"
"And any salary you might ask—"
"What are you talking about, Billy Travers?"
"YOU'VE taken all the poetry out of it." Page 72"YOU'VE taken all the poetry out of it."Page 72
"YOU'VE taken all the poetry out of it."
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"I'm making you a proposal of marriage," explained the bachelor inan injured tone. "Don't you recognize it?"
The widow rose silently, lifted the sheet of paper in her hands and tore it to pieces.
"Was that your poem?" inquired the bachelor as he watched the breeze carry the fragments away over the grass.
The widow shook out her ruffles and picked up her hat.
"You've taken all the poetry out of it," she retorted, as she fled toward the house.
The bachelor looked after her undecidedly for a moment. Then he leaned back lazily and blinked up at the sky between the leaves.
"And this," he said softly, "is the white man's burden."
"IF there were only some way," began the bachelor, gazing thoughtfully out of the window of the dining car, "in which a fellow could prove his love——"
"There are millions of them!" declared the widow, sipping her consommé daintily.
"Those mediæval fellows had such an advantage over us," complained the bachelor. "When a chap loved a girl, all he had to do to prove it was to get another chap to say he didn't, and then to break the other chap's head. That was a sure sign."
"And it was so easy," remarked the widow.
"Yes," agreed the bachelor, enthusiastically. "Is there anybody whose head you particularly want broken? I feel remarkably like fighting."
"Of course, you do," said the widow sympathetically. "The fighting spirit is born in every man. But duelling isn't a sign of love; it's a sign of egotism, hurt pride, the spirit of competition, the dog-in-the-manger feeling. Besides, it's out of fashion."
"Well," sighed the bachelor, "then I suppose I shall have to save your life or—die for you."
"You might," said the widow, nodding encouragingly, "but it wouldn't prove anything—except that you had a sense of the picturesque and dramatic. Suppose you did save my life; wouldn't you do asmuch for any man, woman or child, or even any little stray dog who might happen to fall out of a boat or be caught in a fire, or get under the feet of a runaway?"
"I've got it!" cried the bachelor, "I'll write a book of poems and dedicate them to you."
The widow toyed with her spoon.
"You've done that to—several girls before," she remarked ungratefully.
"That's it!" cried the bachelor. "How is a man going to tell when he's in love when he feels the same way—every time?"
"Have you forgotten your soup?" asked the widow, glancing at the untouched plate in front of the bachelor.
The bachelor picked up his spoon languidly.
"No," he said, "but——"
"Because if you had," said the widow, "it would have been a proof."
"A—what?"
"A proof," repeated the widow. "Forgetting to eat your meals is the first sign of love. A man may write poetry and swear love by all the planets separately; but if he sits down opposite you an hour afterward and orders mutton chops and gravy and devours them to the last crumb, either he doesn't mean what he says or doesn't know what he is talking about. When he lets his breakfast grow cold and forgets to go out to his lunch and loses his interest in his dinner it's a sure sign of love."
"It might be a sign of dyspepsia," suggested the bachelor doubtfully.
"Oh, well," proceeded the widow,sipping her soup leisurely, "there are other signs besides a lost appetite."
The bachelor looked hopeful.
"Is one of them smelling violets all day, when there aren't any 'round; and feeling a funny jump in your throat every time you catch sight of a violet hat; and suddenly discovering you have written, 'Send me eight quarts of violets and a widow,' instead of 'eight quarts of gasoline and a patent pump'?"
The widow leaned so far over her soup that her eyes were completely shaded by the brim of her violet hat.
"Yes," she said gently, "loss of reason is one of them—and loss of memory."
"And loss of sleep?"
"And loss of common sense."
"And loss of self-respect?"
"And of your powers of conversation."
"Nonsense!" cried the bachelor, "a man in love can say more fool things——"
The widow put down her spoon emphatically.
"A man in love," she contradicted, "can't talk at all? It's not the things he says, but the things he isn't able to say; the things that choke right up in his throat——"
"I've had that!" interrupted the bachelor.
"Had—what?"
"The 'love-lump' in the throat."
"And did you ever go up stairs to light the gas and turn on the water instead; or walk three blocks in the wrong direction without knowing it; or hunt ten minutes for your shoesand then discover it was your collar button or your hat that you had lost?"
"Or add a column of figures and get a poem for the answer; or break your neck running to the office and then have to sit down and think what you came down early for; or begin a business letter 'Dearest Smith' and drop it in the box without a stamp, or read your paper upside down, or——"
"You've got it!" cried the widow.
"I know it," sighed the bachelor, "dreadfully!"
"The idea, I mean," said the widow, blushing. "Those are the real proofs of love."
"But," protested the bachelor, "they aren't impressive. How are you going to let the girl know——"
"A girl always knows," declared the widow.
"Are you going to say, 'Araminta, darling, I put on odd socks this morning and salted my coffee and sugared my chop.' Accept this as a proof?"
"No, no, no," said the widow, laughing, "of course not! But when you arrive at her house half an hour before the time and appear at odd and embarrassing moments without a rational excuse and get mixed on your dates and look at her as if she were the moon or a ghost, and might disappear at any moment, and sit for hours gazing into space and moistening your lips in the hope that you will think of something to say——"
"She knows that she's got you!" groaned the bachelor.
"Oh, she may not," declared thewidow, cheerfully. "She may not know anything. She may be in love herself."
"That's it!" protested the bachelor, "knowing you're in love is only half the trouble. How are you going to know when a girl has reached the love stage? How are you going to know that she is not just dangling you, or marrying you for your money? They're so clever and wise and coquettish and——"
"When a girl is in love," said the widow, "she ceases being clever and wise and coquettish. She becomes mooney and silent and begins to notice things about you that you never knew yourself, such as that your nose is like Napoleon's or that you have a profile like E. H. Sothern and shoulders like Hackett's and hairlike Kyrle Bellew's. She never keeps you waiting, but is always dressed and sitting in the parlor an hour before you arrive and is never in a hurry to get home and will walk for blocks beside you in the rain with her best hat on without caring. She begins to 'mother' you——"
"To what?"
"To caution you about getting your feet wet and avoiding a draught and wearing your overcoat and to look at you every time you leave her as if she was afraid you would die before morning and—Mr. Travers, do you know I believe this train has reached Jersey City?"
"Why—why—so it has! Waiter! Waiter! Where in thunder is that blockhead? Why hasn't he brought us the rest of the dinner?"
"You forgot to order it!" said the widow, looking maliciously up under her hat.
"Jersey City! Last stop!" called the conductor from the door.
The bachelor put down his napkin and rose.
"Check, sir?" asked the waiter, with accusing eyes.
"Were you forgetting to pay?" inquired the widow, softly.
The bachelor thrust a bill into the waiter's hands and started down the aisle, followed by the widow.
"You forgot your change," remarked the widow, as they stepped into the depot.
"Oh, never mind," said the bachelor. "Where are your wraps?"
The widow clutched his sleeve.
"I—I—left them in the dining car," she stammered.
The bachelor gazed down at the top of the violet hat with a triumphant smile.
"Oh, do go back and try to get them!" moaned the widow glancing wildly at the train, which by this time was being switched onto a side track.
"It will be at the risk of my life," declared the bachelor, "but if you want—any more——"
"More—what?" asked the widow, distractedly.
"Proof," said the bachelor.
"It isn't necessary," said the widow, as she spied an excited porter running toward them, clutching a pongee coat, a silver hand bag and a violet parasol.
"These," said the bachelor, takingthem tenderly from the porter and tipping him, "are the most substantial signs of——"
"A lost head," said the widow quickly.
"Or a lost heart," added the bachelor, as they crossed the station and stepped fatuously on to—the wrong ferryboat.
"WHAT ought I to do," asked the widow, carefully licking all the gum off the flap of a violet envelope and then trying to make it stick, "to a silly boy, who—asked me for a kiss?"
"What ought you to do?" repeated the bachelor, laying down his cigar and regarding the widow severely. "Refuse him, of course."
"Oh, of course," agreed the widow, rubbing the envelope spasmodically with the end of her handkerchief, "but what ought I do to teach him better?"
"I can't think of anything—better," replied the bachelor, charitably reaching for the violet envelope and closing it firmly with his fist.
"How about just taking the kiss—without asking for it?" inquired the widow naively, as she leaned luxuriously back among the cushions of the divan. "Wouldn't that have been better—for him, I mean?"
"Would it?" The bachelor looked the widow straight in the eye.
"Well," replied the widow weakly, toying with some fringe on a satin sofa pillow and carefully avoiding the bachelor's gaze, "he would have gotten it."
"And now he never will," rejoined the bachelor with a confidence he did not feel.
"Oh, I don't know." The widowbecame suddenly interested in the arrangement of the fringe on the satin sofa pillow. "But it isn't the man who asks a woman for a kiss or—or anything—who gets it. It's the man who takes for granted."
"Takes—what?"
"Takes her by surprise, Mr. Travers," explained the widow, "and doesn't give her time to think or to say no. The short cut to managing a woman is not argument or reason. It's action. She may like to be coaxed, but it's the man who orders her about whom she admires—and obeys. Eve has never forgotten that she is only a rib and when Adam forgets it, she——"
"Makes him feel like a small part of the vertebræ," interpolated the bachelor tentatively.
"Naturally," returned the widow, tying the sofa pillow fringe in a hard knot and then untying it again, "when a man comes to her on his knees she is clever enough to keep him there; but when he comes to her with a scepter in his hand and determination in his eye, she has a wholesome respect for him. It's not the man who begs but the one who demands that receives. It's not the man who asks a girl to marry him, but the one who tells her that she is going to marry him, who gets her. It's not the husband who requests the privilege of carrying a latch-key or staying down town at night who can do so without fear and trembling, but the one who calmly takes the latch-key and telephones his wife that he is going to stay down town and thenrings off as though the matter were settled. The question of who's going to have the whip hand in love or matrimony is decided the very first time a man looks at a woman and lets her know who's master."
The bachelor flicked the ashes off his cigar and regarded the widow curiously.
"Are you talking Christian Science or Hypnotism?" he inquired patiently.
"Neither," replied the widow, "I'm talking facts, Mr. Travers. Haven't you ever seen a little short-legged man with a snub nose married to a beautiful, queenly creature, whom he ordered about as if she were the original Greek slave and who obeyed him as if he were Nero himself, and adored him in proportionto his overbearing qualities? And have you never seen a magnificent, six-foot-two specimen of masculine humanity, who was first in war and first everywhere but in his own home, where he was afraid to put his feet on a chair or light a pipe or make an original remark, because some little dried-up runt of a woman had him hypnotized into believing that he was the thirty-second vertebræ and she all the rest of the bones and sinew of the human race? A woman is like a darky, who fancies that 'freedom' means three-quarters of the sidewalk, or a small boy who imagines that doing as he pleases means smashing his sister's toys and stealing sweets from the pantry. Put her in her place and she will stay there; but give her an inch of power and she'lltake an ell of liberty and boss you off your own door sill. The biggest, boldest woman that ever lived is built like a barge, to be towed; and any little man who puffs up enough steam and makes a loud enough noise can attach her to himself and tow her all the way up the river of life."
The bachelor laid down his cigar and gazed at the widow in awe.
"And I never knew it," he whispered huskily.
"I suppose," said the widow, beginning to toy with the fringe again, "that you've been asking girls to kiss you, all this time."
"Notallthe time," protested the bachelor.
"And, of course," continued the widow maliciously, "they've all refused you."
"Notall," repeated the bachelor, pensively.
"What?" The widow glanced up quickly.
"Once," explained the bachelor apologetically, "I didn't have a bald spot."
"When a man asks for a kiss," pursued the widow, thoughtfully, "a girl HAS to refuse him; but when he takes it——"
"She has to take it, too," said the bachelor, chuckling.
"Would you mind," asked the widow, ignoring the last flippant bit of persiflage and picking up the violet envelope, "posting a letter for me?"
"May I look at the address?" demanded the bachelor.
"It's to the boy," began the widow, "who—who——"
"Took the roundabout way?" finished the bachelor, helpfully.
The widow nodded.
"I have written him," she explained, "that he mustn't—that it would be best if he wouldn't come here any more. That will keep him in his place, I think."
"On his knees?" inquired the bachelor sarcastically.
"And I told him," proceeded the widow, with a reproachful glance at the bachelor, "how very rude and foolish——"
"Did you explain," interrupted the bachelor, "that the foolishness consisted in not taking the kiss?"
"Mr. Travers!"
"And that the rudeness lay entirely in assuming that you might not want to be——"
"How dare you!" cried the widow, flaming as red as the scarlet satin sofa pillow behind her head. "I gave him a dreadful scolding!" she added, looking pensively at the sealed note and toying with the edge of the flap, as though she half wished it would come open again.
"In other words," remarked the bachelor laconically, "having him down, you proceeded to wipe your feet on him. Since he had turned the left cheek, you made him turn all the way round, so that you could stick pins in his back and make him feel like the thirty-second vertebræ and——"
"I had to, Mr. Travers," cried thewidow pleadingly. "It was my duty."
"Your—what?"
"To teach him a lesson," explained the widow promptly. "He's got to learn that in the situation between man and woman there's only one throne and that whoever gets up on it first wields the sceptre. He's got to learn that the conquest of woman is not, like the Battle of Waterloo, an affair of strategy, but like the Battle of Bunker Hill or Sennacherib——"
"Or the Boston Tea Party or the Massacre of the Innocents," broke in the bachelor. "But aren't you a little hard on the girl? If you get him too well trained he'll beat her."
"Well," replied the widow promptly, "if he does she'll adore him. Besides, it's much better to have the matrimonial medicine administeredin allopathic doses than in the little homeopathic pellets of caution and deceit, and lies and arguments which end in the divorce court, and a woman enjoys being bossed and bullied and ordered about by the man she loves quite as much as he enjoys the bossing and bullying. It's her natural instinct to look up, but she can't look up to a man who is figuratively at her feet. She may struggle against the man who attempts to conquer her by main force, but she enjoys being conquered just the same, and it takes a great burden off her soul to be able to lay her head on a broad, masculine shoulder and to know that every affair in life is going to be settled and decided for her.
"She may talk about thinking for herself and voting and all that, butshe is always glad enough to sit back and be thought for and voted for by some man who has magnetized her into believing him the incarnation of intelligence. And any man can do it. If the average husband only had a little more nerve and fewer nerves, he could master his wife with one hand and his eyes shut. The heathen Turk can get along better with a whole harem full of women than the civilized man gets along with one lone, lorn wife. It isn't because he's any wiser or cleverer or kinder, but because the first Turk learned the short cut to managing a woman and passed the secret down in the family. They don't ask them to marry them over there, they order them; they don't request them to run an errand or sew on a button, they merely wave theirhands and the women fight for the privilege of obeying. They have known for ages what the white man never seems to have learned, that the way to take a woman is by storm and the way to hold her is by force and that any man can manage any woman if he only knows how and has the audacity and the courage—What are you trying to do, Mr. Travers?"
"I'VE got the courage at last—and the audacity." Page 99"I'VE got the courage at last—and the audacity."Page 99
"I'VE got the courage at last—and the audacity."
Page 99
"I'm taking a short cut to the divan," replied the bachelor, sitting down beside the widow, "and I've got the courage at last——"
"How dare you, Billy Travers!"
"And the audacity——"
"Stop! Stop!"
"And the nerve——"
"Mr. Taylor," announced the maid, appearing suddenly between the portieres at this critical moment.
"Oh, mercy!" cried the widow, "and my hair is just——"
"Am I intruding?" asked a fresh-faced young man, entering briskly between the portieres.
"Not at all, Bobby," said the widow sweetly, holding out one hand and feeling her back hair with the other. "You arrived just at the—psychological moment. We have been talking about you for the last half hour."
"WHY is it," asked the widow, swinging her chatelaine pensively as she strolled down the avenue beside the bachelor, "that the man who is most in love is most apt to get over it suddenly?"
The bachelor withdrew his eyes from the pretty pair of ankles across the street and glanced down at the widow with the lenient smile of superior wisdom.
"Why is it," he retorted, "that the man who drinks the most champagne at dinner has the worst headache next morning?"
"That isn't any explanation at all,Mr. Travers." The widow's chatelaine jingled impatiently. "Champagne is intoxicating."
"So is love."
"Champagne leaves you with an—an all-gone feeling."
"And love leaves you with—'that tired feeling'."
"Not me," said the widow promptly, "I always feel exhilarated after—after——"
"Afterwards," finished the bachelor helpfully. "But you're a woman. It's the man who has the 'tired feeling'."
"What is it like?" persisted the widow.
"Well," the bachelor flipped his cane thoughtfully, "did you ever eat a fourteen course dinner, and then go to Sherry's afterward for supper andthen go to Delmonico's for a snack and to Rector's for——"
"I've been through it," sighed the widow.
"You didn't want any more, did you?" asked the bachelor sympathetically. "That's the way a man feels when he's had enough of love—or a woman."
"But—but love isn't indigestible."
"Too much of anything—love or dinner or champagne—is apt to take away your appetite. And too much of a woman is sure to make you hate the sight of her."
The widow's chatelaine was dancing madly in the afternoon sunlight.
"I don't suppose," she said witheringly, "that it would be possible for a woman to get too much of a man!"
"No," agreed the bachelor cheerfully,as he squinted at another pair of pretty ankles, "women are sentimental topers. They sip their wine or their sentiment slowly and comfortably; they don't gulp it down like a man. That's why the man has usually finished the bottle before the woman has touched her glass. He is ready to turn out the lights and put an end to the affair just as she has begun to get really interested. But," and the bachelor turned suddenly upon the widow, "who is the man? Show him to me!" and he brought his cane down fiercely on the sidewalk.
"Wh-what man?" asked the widow, turning pink to the tips of her ears.
"The man who has jilt—gotten over it. I don't see how it's possible,"he added thoughtfully, "with you."
"Me!" The widow's voice was as chill and crisp as the autumn air. "I wish," she added musingly, "that I knew how to patch it up."
"That's right!" retorted the bachelor. "Try to revive his interest in champagne by offering it to him—the morning after. What he needs, my dear lady, is—ice. When he has had a little ice and a little tabasco sauce——"
"He may want more champagne?" asked the widow hopefully.
"Yes," replied the bachelor, swinging his cane cheerfully, "but not from the same bottle. Will women ever learn," he mused, "that it is as impossible to revive a man's interest in a woman he has completely gotten over loving as to make him want stalechampagne with all the fizz gone out of it?"
"I don't see why," said the widow. "A woman often falls in love with the same man twice."
"Because she never falls too much in love with him—once," explained the bachelor.
The widow's chatelaine rattled indignantly.
"Nonsense!" she cried, "A woman's love is always stronger and deeper than a man's."
"But it isn't so effervescent. She is a natural miser and she hoards her feelings. A man flings his sentiment about like a prodigal and naturally when it's all gone—there isn't any left."
"Is that when he gets the 'tiredfeeling?'" inquired the widow sympathetically.
"Yes," said the bachelor, "and nothing is worse than waking up in the morning with a dark brown taste in your mouth—to find the woman standing before you offering you more champagne. But she always does. A woman never seems to know when the logical conclusion of a love affair has arrived. She clings with all her strength to the tattered remnants of sentiment and shuts her eyes and tries to make believe it isn't morning, when she ought to go away——"
"And let him sleep it off," suggested the widow.
"That's it," agreed the bachelor, "I once knew a man who was infatuated with a woman who used attar of roseson her gloves and things. When he woke up—I beg your pardon—after they had broken off, he never could abide the smell of roses."
"I suppose," said the widow, holding her muff against her cheek sentimentally, "it reminded him of all the tender little tête-à-têtes and moonlight nights and the way her hair curled about her forehead and the way she used to smile at him, and of her gloves and her ruffles and the color of her eyes and——"
"It didn't!" said the bachelor emphatically. "It nauseated him. It's the woman who always remembers the pleasant part of a love affair. A man remembers only—the next morning—and the hard time he had getting out of it."
"And the headache," added the widow.
"And the 'tired feeling'."
"And the other woman," suggested the widow contemptuously.
"Yes," agreed the bachelor, "the other woman, of course. But," he added thoughtfully, "if a woman could only take the hint in time——"
"What time?" asked the widow. "When a man begins to be late for his engagements?"
"Yes; or to forget them altogether."
"And to make excuses and enlarge on his rush of business."
"And to seem abstracted during the conversation."
"And to stop noticing her jokes or her frocks or the way she does her hair."
"And to stay away from places where he could be sure to meet her."
"But," protested the widow, "they always make such plausible excuses."
"Nothing," said the bachelor confidently, "will keep a man away from a woman except a lack of interest in her——"
"Or an interest in another woman," added the widow promptly. "But," she concluded tentatively, "there ought to be a cure for it."
"For what? The other woman?"
"That tired feeling, Mr. Travers."
"There isn't any cure," replied the bachelor promptly, "but there's a good preventive. When you were a very little girl," he continued patronizingly, "and liked jam——"
"I like it now!" declared the widow.
"How did your mother manage to preserve your interest in it?"
"She took the jam away, Mr. Travers, and put it on the top shelf always—just before I had had enough."
"Well, that's the way to preserve a man's interest in a woman," declared the bachelor. "Deal yourself out to him in homeopathic doses. Put yourself on the top shelf, where it is hard for him to get at you. Feed him sugar out of a teaspoon; don't pass him the whole sugar bowl. Then he will be always begging for more. One only wants more of anything that one can't get enough of, you know. Now, if a woman would use her judgment——"
"As if a woman in love had any judgment!" mocked the widow.
"That's it!" sighed the bachelor, "She never has. She just lays the whole feast before the man, flings all her charms at his head at once, surfeits him with the champagne of her wit and lets him eat all the sugar off his cake right away. The love affair springs up like a mushroom and—"
"Oh, well," interrupted the widow impatiently, "I like mushroom love affairs. I like a man who can fling himself headlong into an affair and——"
"Of course you do!" sighed the bachelor, "every woman does. The sensible and temperate man who will love her all his life——"
"A little!" said the widow contemptuously.
"Well, a little is enough," retorted the bachelor, "at a time."
"That depends," said the widow, "on how many times—one is loved. There are some women who are so saving of their sugar and frugal with their sentiment that they never know the real joy of a grand passion or of having a man love them properly. What's the use of having money if you are always going to keep it in the bank?" she added conclusively.
The bachelor looked down at her and said nothing. There was a smile of hopeless resignation in his eyes.
"Here we are!" cried the widow, suddenly stopping in front of a tall brownstone house and holding out her hand politely. "So glad to have——"
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" demanded the bachelor, in astonishment.
The widow lifted her eyebrows in faint surprise.
"What," she asked sweetly, "after——"
"You broke an engagement with me last night!" blurted out the bachelor, looking the widow straight in the eyes. But the widow shifted her gaze to the park across the street and swung her chatelaine indifferently.
"And you weren't 'at home' to me the day before yesterday and you were out of town for a week before that; and you promised me that this afternoon——"
"Did I?" asked the widow, looking up innocently.
"Yes, you did!" declared the bachelor.
"Oh, well," laughed the widow, asshe tripped up the steps with a wave of her muff, "I was only showing you the sugar bowl; but I didn't mean you could have another spoonful; besides," she added, turning round and talking through the tunnel in her muff, "there's somebody waiting inside."
"Who?" demanded the bachelor.
"The man with the 'tired feeling'," said the widow.
"But," began the bachelor in a puzzled voice, "if he is tired of—of you——"
"Me!" the widow laughed. "He isn't tired of me, Mr. Travers. It's—the other woman. He came to me for—for——"
"A bracer?" suggested the bachelor. "What are you going to give him?" he added.
"Vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt," said the widow counting off the buttons of her coat, child fashion.
The bachelor looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"A little—ice," said the widow, gazing out over the park.
"Anything else?" persisted the bachelor.
The widow studied her muff musingly.
"Oh—I don't know," she said, doubtfully.
"Any—sugar?" demanded the bachelor.
The widow shook her head smilingly.
"No," she said, "I'm saving that for another——"
"Another!"
"Another time," said the widow ambiguously as she let the door close softly behind her.