Chapter II: Part 2

"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, taking them 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.

VII

A SHORT CUT.

"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 widow became 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 vertebrae," 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 then rings 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 proportion to 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 vertebrae 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'll take 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."

"Not _all_ the time," protested the bachelor.

"And, of course," continued the widow maliciously, "they've all refused you."

"Not _all_," 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 vertebrae and----"

"I had to, Mr. Travers," cried the widow 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 administered in 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, but she 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 their hands 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'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."

VIII

AFTER LOVE----(?)

"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 and then 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 stale champagne 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 'tired feeling?'" 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 roses on 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 tete-a-tetes 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, as she 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.

IX

HER WAY.

"THERE," said the bachelor, as he nodded amiably at the big, jolly-looking man beside the little, weazened woman, "is the best husband the Lord ever made!"

"The Lord!" said the widow scornfully. "It isn't the Lord who makes husbands. It's the wife!"

"And I always thought God made Adam," sighed the bachelor, humbly.

"Adam," said the widow promptly, as she dropped another lump of sugar into her tea, "wasn't a husband. He was only a man. And a man is only--raw material. He is like a ready-made frock or a ready-made coat; he has got to be cut down and built up and ironed out and taken in and to have all the raw edges trimmed off before he is properly----"

"Finished?" suggested the bachelor.

The widow nodded cheerfully.

"Yes," she agreed, "and adjusted to matrimony. And even then sometimes he is a dreadful botch."

"And all his style is gone," sighed the bachelor.

The widow studied her Sevres cup thoughtfully.

"Well," she admitted, "sometimes the material is so bad or so skimpy--"

"So--what?"

The widow smiled patiently.

"Skimpy," she repeated. "There is so little to some men that the cleverest woman couldn't patch them up into a full-sized specimen. They are like the odds and ends left on the remnant counter. You have to do the best you can with them and then use Christian Science to make yourself believe they are all there and that the patches don't show. Haven't you ever seen magnificent women trailing little annexes after them like echoes or--or----"

"Captives in the wake of a conquering queen?" broke in the bachelor.

The widow studied her Sevres cup as the purple plume on her hat danced.

"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at the last moment and made over to fit the situation--which they never do."

The bachelor set down his teacup with the light of revelation in his eyes.

"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked out on purpose to act as shadows or--or satellites."

"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gifts. You can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of the lot."

"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor, "that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take the left-overs."

The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.

"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got it home, or how it will make up or whether it will fade or run or shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select something serviceable--dull and virtuous and worthy and all that--and he may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles----"

"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.

"Yes," agreed the widow, "and the wildest 'jolly good fellow' will often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."

"Humph," protested the bachelor, "but when you catch 'em wild and tame 'em, how do you know they are not going to break the harness or burst the basting threads?"

The widow considered a moment.

"You don't," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But there is a great deal in catching the wild variety and domesticating them while they are young. Of course, it's utterly impossible to subdue a lion after he has got his second teeth, and it's utterly foolish to try to reform a man--after he is thirty or has begun to lose his hair. Besides," she added, "there is so much in the woman who does the training and the making over. There are some women who could spoil the finest masculine cloth in the world by too much cutting and ripping and--and nagging; while there are others who can give a man or a house or a frock just the touch that will perfect them."

"How do they do it?" asked the bachelor enthusiastically. "Take 'em by the nape of the neck and----"

"Mercy, no!" cried the widow. "They take them unawares. The well-trained husband never knows what has happened to him. He only knows that, after ten years of matrimony, he is ashamed to acknowledge his own youthful picture. He has been literally re-formed in everything from his collars and the way he parts his hair to his morals and the way he signs his name. The best husbands aren't caught; they're made. And the luckiest woman isn't the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the most out of the man she marries."

"But," protested the bachelor, "if we're such a lot and such a lottery, why do you marry us at all?"

The widow looked up in surprise and stopped with her cup poised in midair.

"Why do we wear frocks, Mr. Travers?" she asked witheringly. "Why do we pompadour our hair or eat with forks or go to pink teas? Marriage is a custom; and if a woman doesn't marry she is simply non--non----"

"Compos mentis?" inquired the bachelor, helpfully.

"Well, yes," said the widow, "but that wasn't what I meant. What is the Latin for 'not in it'? Her father looks at her accusingly every time he has to pay her dressmaker's bill and her mother looks at her commiseratingly every time she comes home without being engaged and all her friends look at her as if she were a curiosity or--or a failure. And besides, she misses her mission in life. That was what the Lord put Eve in the world for--to give the finishing touches to Adam."

"She finished him all right!" exclaimed the bachelor fervently.

"Making a living," went on the widow scorning the insinuation, "or making a career or making fame or a fortune isn't the real forte of woman. It's making a husband--out of a man."

"I should think," said the bachelor setting down his teacup and leaning back comfortably in his chair, "that they would form a corporation and set up a factory where they could turn 'em out by the dozen or the crate--or---"

"Pooh!" cried the widow, "a husband is a work of art and has to be made by hand. He can't be turned out by machinery like a chromo or a lithograph. And, besides, if you want a ready-made one you can always find plenty of them on the second-hand counter----"

"On the--where?"

"Where they keep the widowers," explained the widow. "If a woman isn't interested or clever enough to manufacture her own husband, she can always find some man who has been modeled by another woman. And she has the satisfaction of knowing exactly what she's getting and just what to expect. The only trouble is that, in case she makes a mistake in her choice, she never has a chance to make him over. He has been cut down and relined and faced and patched already to his limit."

"And his seams are apt to be shiny and his temper frayed at the edges," declared the bachelor.

"And you have to be very sure that he fits your disposition."

"And matches your taste."

"And that he won't pinch on the bank account."

"Nor stretch on the truth."

"And that the other woman hasn't botched him."

"And even then he's a hand-me-down--and may shrink or run or--"

"Oh, widowers don't shrink or run," retorted the widow. "Matrimony is a habit with them, and they feel like a cab-horse out of harness without it. They long to feel the bit between their teeth and the gentle hand on the reins----"

"And the basting threads," added the bachelor. "I wonder what it's like," he went on, meditatively.

"You'll never know," said the widow, setting her cup on the tabourette. "You're too old."

"Yes, I've got my second teeth," sighed the bachelor.

"And your bald spot."

"And I've sown my second crop of wild oats."

"And yet," said the widow leaning her chin in her hand and looking up thoughtfully under her purple feather, "it would be a great triumph----"

"I won't be put in harness!" protested the bachelor.

The widow considered him gravely.

"There's plenty of material in you," she declared. "You could be trimmed off and cut down and----"

"I'm too tough to cut!"

"And relined."

"I'm almost moth-eaten now!" moaned the bachelor.

The widow leaned forward and scrutinized him with interest.

"It would be a pity," she said slowly, "to let the wrong woman botch you. The next time you propose to me," she added thoughtfully, "I think I'll----"

"Did I ever propose to you?" broke in the bachelor with real fright.

"Oh, lots of times," said the widow; "it's almost a habit now."

"But you refused me!" pleaded the bachelor. "Say you refused me."

"I did," said the widow promptly. "I wasn't looking for--remnants."

"Never mind!" retorted the bachelor. "Some day you may find I've been grabbed up."

"You'll have lost all your--starch and style by then," said the widow as she patted her back hair and started for the door.

The bachelor followed, putting on his gloves.

"How do you know that?" he asked, when they had bidden their hostess good-afternoon and stood on the portico saying goodby.

"Well," said the widow, "it would take an artist to make you over. The wrong woman would utterly ruin you."

"And who is the wrong woman?" The bachelor tried to look into the widow's eyes beneath the purple feather.

But the widow only glanced out over the lawn and swung her parasol.

"Who is the wrong woman?" persisted the bachelor.

The widow studied the tip of her patent leather toe.

"Who is the wrong woman?"

The widow looked up suddenly under her violet feather.

"The other woman," she said softly, "of course."

X

MARRIAGE.

"ISN'T all this talk about 'trial marriages' absurd?" remarked the widow, laying her newspaper on the tabourette and depositing two small red kid toes on the edge of the fender.

"It is," agreed the bachelor, cheerfully, with his eyes on the red kid toes, "considering that all marriages are--trials."

"Just fancy," went on the widow, scornfully, ignoring the flippancy, "being leased to a husband or wife for a period of years, like a flat or a yacht or--or----"

"A second-hand piano," suggested the bachelor.

"And knowing," continued the widow, gazing contemplatively into the fire, "that when the lease or the contract or whatever it is expired, unless the other party cared to renew it, you would be on the market again."

"And probably in need of all sorts of repairs," added the bachelor, reflectively, "in your temper and your complexion and your ideas."

"Yes," sighed the widow, "ten years of married life will rub all the varnish off your manners, and all the color off your illusions and all the finish off your conversation."

"And the hinges of your love making and your pretty speeches are likely to creak every time you open your mouth," affixed the bachelor, gloomily.

"And you are bound to be old-fashioned," concluded the widow, with conviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands with all the modern improvements. Besides," she continued, thoughtfully, "even if you should be lucky enough to find another--another--"

"Tenant for your heart?" suggested the bachelor, helpfully.

The widow nodded.

"There would be the agony," she went on, "of getting used to him or her."

"And the torture," added the bachelor, with a faint shudder, "of going through with the wedding ceremony again and of walking up a green and yellow church aisle with a green and yellow feeling and a stiff new coat, and the gaping multitude gazing at you as if you were a new specimen of crocodile or a curio or----"

"It takes nearly all of one lifetime," interrupted the widow, impatiently, "to get used to one wife or husband; but, according to the 'trial marriage' idea, just as you had gotten somebody nicely trained into all your little ways and discovered how to manage him----"

"And to bluff him," interpolated the bachelor.

"And what to have for dinner when you were going to show him the bill for a new hat," proceeded the widow, "and how to keep him at home nights----"

"And to separate him from his money," remarked the bachelor, sarcastically.

"And to make him see things your way," concluded the widow, "it would be time to pack up your trunks and leave. Any two people," she continued, meditatively, "can live together fairly comfortably after they have discovered the path around one another's nerves--the little things not to say and not to do in order to avoid friction, and the little things to say and to do that will oil the matrimonial wheels. But it would take all the 'trial' period to get the domestic machine running, and then----"

"You'd be running after another soul-mate," finished the bachelor, sympathetically.

"Yes." The widow crossed the red kid toes and then drew them quickly under the ruffles of her skirts as she caught the bachelor staring at them. "And--I've--forgotten what I was going to say," she finished, turning the color of her slippers.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," said the bachelor, consolingly.

"What!"

"It doesn't matter what you say," explained the bachelor, "it's the way you say it, and----"

"About soul-mates," broke in the widow, collecting herself, "there'd always be the chance," she pursued hurriedly, "that you'd have to take a second-hand one."

"Sometimes," remarked the bachelor, blowing a smoke ring and gazing through it at the place where the widow's toes had been, "second-hand goods are more attractive than cheap, new articles. For instance, widows----"

"Oh, widows!" interrupted the widow impatiently, "They're different. They're like heirlooms--only parted with at death. But it would be different with a wife who was relinquished because she wasn't wanted. If anybody is anxious to get rid of something it is a pretty sure sign that it isn't worth having. It's nearly always got a flaw somewhere and it's seldom what it is represented to be. Besides, I've noticed that the woman who can't get along with one husband, usually finds it just as difficult to get along with another."

"There would always be the chance," protested the bachelor, "that you might get the party who had done the discarding."

"And who might want to do it again," objected the widow triumphantly. "Just imagine," she added irrelevantly, "living with a person whom somebody else had trained!"

"Oh, that would have its advantages," declared the bachelor. "A horse broken to harness is always easier to handle."

"Perhaps," agreed the widow leaning back and thoughtlessly putting her red kid toes on the fender again, "but when two horses are going to travel together it is always best for them to get used to one another's gait from the first. Don't you look at it that way?"

"Which way?" asked the bachelor, squinting at the fender with his head on the side.

"Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man who had been encouraged to take an interest in the household affairs and having him following you about picking up things after you; or one, whose first wife had trained him to sit by the fire in the evening, and whom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or one who had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over the furniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"

"Or to a wife," interpolated the bachelor, "who had always handled the funds and monopolized the conversation and chosen her husband's collars and who threw all her past husbands at you every time you did something she wasn't used to or objected to something she was used to."

"Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid things two people could say to one another."

"Such as 'Just wait until the lease is up!'" suggested the bachelor.

The widow nodded.

"Or, 'The next time I marry, I'll be careful not to take anybody with red hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.

"That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "It wouldn't last forever! And the knowledge that it wouldn't would be such an anaesthetic."

"Such a what!" the widow sat up so suddenly that both toes slipped from the fender and her heels landed indignantly on the floor.

"It would be the lump of sugar," explained the bachelor, "that would take away the bitter taste and make you able to swallow all the trials more easily. It's the feeling that a painful operation won't last long that makes it possible to grin and bear it. Besides, it would do away with all sorts of crimes, like divorce and wife murder and ground glass in the coffee. Knowing that the marriage was only temporary and that we were only sort of house-party guests might make us more polite and agreeable and entertaining, so as to leave a good impression behind us."

"I do believe," cried the widow, sitting up straight and looking at the bachelor accusingly, "that you're arguing in favor of 'trial marriage.'"

"I'm not arguing in favor of marriage at all," protested the bachelor plaintively. "But marrying for life is like putting the whole dinner on the table at once. It takes away your appetite. Marrying on trial would be more like serving it in courses."

"And changing the course would be such a strain," declared the widow. "Why, when the contract was up how would you know how to divide things--the children and--"

"The dog and the cat."

"And all the little mementos you had collected together and the things you had shared in common and the favorite arm chair and the things you had grown used to and fond of----"

"Oh, well, in that case," remarked the bachelor, "you might have grown so used to and fond of one another that when it came to the parting of the ways, you would not want to part them. After all," he went on soberly, "if 'trial marriages' were put into effect, they would end nine times out of ten in good old fashioned matrimony. A man can get as accustomed to a woman as he does to a pipe or a chair----"

"What!"

"And a woman," pursued the bachelor, "can become as attached to a man and as fond of him as she is of an old umbrella or a pair of old shoes that have done good service. No matter how battered or worn they may become, nor how many breaks there are in them, we can never find anything to quite take their place. Matrimony, after all, is just a habit; and husbands and wives become habits--habits that however disagreeable they may be we don't want to part with. 'Trial marriages,' even if they should be tried, wouldn't alter things much. As long as two people can stand one another they will cling together anyhow, and if they can't they won't anyhow; and whether it's a run out lease or a divorce or prussic acid that separates them doesn't make much difference. Custom, not the wedding certificate, is the tie that binds most of us. The savage doesn't need any laws to hold him to the woman of his choice. Habit does it; and if habit doesn't the woman will!"

The widow sighed and leaned back in her chair.

"I suppose so," she said, "but it seems dreadfully dreary."

"What seems dreadfully dreary?" inquired the bachelor.

"Matrimony," replied the widow solemnly. "It IS like those old chairs and pipes and shoes and things you were speaking of; it's full of holes and breaks and bare spots, and it won't always work--but there's nothing that will quite take the place of it."

"Nothing," said the bachelor, promptly. "That's why I want to--"

The widow rose quickly and shook out her skirts.

"Now, don't begin that, Billy," she said, trying to be severe, "you're too old!"

"Oh, well, I'm still in good repair," protested the bachelor.

The widow shook her head.

"All the varnish is worn off your ideals," she objected, "and the hinges of your enthusiasm creak and you've got a bare spot on the top of your head, and----"

"But I've most of the modern improvements," broke in the bachelor, desperately, "and I'm not second-hand, anyway!"

"No," said the widow, looking him over critically, "you're shop-worn. But, originally, you were an attractive article, and you're genuine and good style and well preserved, and if----"

"Well?" The bachelor looked up expectantly.

"If there WERE such a thing as 'trial marriages'--" The widow hesitated again.

"You'd give me a trial?" asked the bachelor eagerly.

"Oh," said the widow, studying the toes of her red slippers, "it wouldn't be--such a trial!"

XI

THE WIDOW'S DEAL.

"WHO is the ideal woman?" asked the widow pensively, laying down her embroidery hoop and clasping her hands behind her head.

The bachelor blew a smoke ring reflectively and squinted through it at the widow.

"You've got powder on your nose!" he remarked disapprovingly.

The widow snatched up a diaphanous lace handkerchief and began rubbing her nose.

"Have I got too much on?" she asked anxiously.

"Any," replied the bachelor, with dignified scorn, "is too much--in a man's eyes."

The widow laughed and stopped rubbing her nose.

"But it isn't in his eyes," she protested, "if it is put on so artistically that he doesn't see it. Getting it on straight is such an art!" and the widow sighed.

"Black art, you mean," exclaimed the bachelor disgustedly. "A made-up woman is like paste jewelry and imitation bric-a-brac. She looks cheap and unsubstantial and as though she wouldn't wear well. Even granting that you aren't half good enough for us----"

"What!"

"And that you don't come up to our standards----"

The widow dropped her embroidery hoop and sat up with blazing eyes.

"You flatter yourself, Mr. Travers!"

"No, I don't!" retorted the bachelor. "It's you who flatter us, when you think it necessary to plaster over your defects and put additions on your figures and rouge on your cheeks and frills on your manners. As a matter of fact," he added decisively, "a man's ideal is a natural woman with a natural complexion and natural hair and natural ways and natural self-respect."

The widow sighed and took up her embroidery hoop again.

"I used to think so, too," she said sadly.

The bachelor lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Before I discovered," she explained, "that it was just as often a woman with butter-colored hair and a tailor-made figure and a 'past' and a manufactured 'bloom of health.' The truth is," she concluded, stabbing her needle very carefully into the centre of an unhealthy looking green silk rose, "that no two men admire the same woman, and no one man admires the same thing in two women. Now, there's Miss Gunning, who wears a sweater and says 'damn' and is perfectly natural and self-respecting and----"

"No man gets ecstatic over a bad imitation of himself!" expostulated the bachelor.

"Then why," said the widow, laying down her needle and fixing the bachelor with a glittering eye, "do you spend so much time on the golf links, and out driving and hunting and walking with her?"

"Because," explained the bachelor, meekly, "she sometimes hits the ball, and she can sit in her saddle without being tied there, and she doesn't grab the reins nor call a 'hoof' a 'paw.' But," he added fervently, "I'd take my hat and run if she asked me to spend my life with her."

"Oh, well," the widow tossed her head independently. "She won't. Miss Gunning can take care of herself."

"That's just it!" pursued the bachelor. "The very fact that she can take care of herself and get across gutters alone and pick up things for herself and handle her own horse and beat me at golf and tennis, takes away that gratifying sense of protection--"

"And superiority," interposed the widow softly.

"That a man likes to feel toward a woman," concluded the bachelor, ignoring her. "Muscle and biceps and a 32-inch waist," he added, "are 'refreshing,' but in time they get on your nerves. It may not be immoral for a dear little thing to say 'damn,' but it affects a man just as it would to hear a canary bird squawking like a parrot. When a chap is going for a walk cross country he may pick out the girl with the stride and the strong back, who can leap a fence and help herself over puddles, to accompany him, but when he is ready for a walk to the altar he naturally prefers somebody who understands the art of leaning gently on the masculine arm and who hasn't any rough edges or----"

"Sharp points of view," suggested the widow.

"Or opinions on the equality of the sexes," added the bachelor.

"Or on politics."

"Or the higher life."

"Or on anything but the latest way to curl her hair and make over a hat," finished the widow. "Isn't it funny," she added thoughtfully twisting a French knot into the centre of the sickly green rose, "how many men idealize a fool?"

The bachelor started.

"I---I beg your pardon," he stammered.

"All a woman has got to know in order to wear a halo," went on the widow, calmly fastening the French knot with a jerk of her needle, "is how to keep it on straight. All a man demands of her is the negative virtues and the knowledge of how not to do things; how not to think, how not to argue, how not to nag, how not to theorize, how not to be athletic, how not to spend money, how not to take care of herself, how not----"

"You've got your ideas into a French knot!" broke in the bachelor desperately. "You're all tangled up in the thread of your argument. It isn't how not to do things but how to do them that is important to a woman. It isn't what she does but how she does it that matters. She may commit a highway murder or low down burglary; and if she does it in a ruffled skirt and a picture hat any man will forgive her. Her morals may be as crooked and dark as a lane at midnight; but if her manners are smooth and gentle and guileless and tender she can deceive the cleverest man alive into believing her a nun. It isn't what she says but how she says it that counts. There are some women who could read your death warrant or repeat the multiplication table in such a confiding voice and with such a tender glance that you would want to take them in your arms and thank them for it. It isn't what a woman wears but how she wears it; it's not her beauty nor her talents nor her frocks that make her fascinating, but her ways, the little earmarks of femininity that God put on every creature born to wear petticoats; and if she's got those she may be a Lucretia Borgia or a Bloody Mary at heart; she may be brown or yellow or pale green; she may be old or young, big or little, stupid or clever, and still wear a beautiful halo. The trouble," he added, flicking the end of his cigar thoughtfully, "is not with man's ideal but with woman's deal. She holds all the cards, but she plays them badly. When a two-spot of flattery would win her point, she deals a chap the queen of arguments; when the five of smiles would take the trick for her, she plays the deuce of a pout. When the ace of sympathy or the ten of tact would put the whole game of love into her hands, she thinks it is time to be funny and flings a man the joker."

The widow laid her work on the table beside her, folded her hands in her lap and smiled at the bachelor sweetly.

"That's just what I said," she remarked, gently.

"What you said!"

The widow nodded and rubbed her nose reminiscently with the end of her handkerchief.

"Yes," she replied, "it isn't putting powder on your nose or rouge on your cheeks or perfume on your petticoats or a broad 'A' on your accent that shocks a man, but putting them on inartistically. It isn't the things you do but the things you overdo that offend masculine taste. It's the 'over-done' woman that a man hates--the woman who is over-dressed or overly made-up, or overly cordial or overly flattering, or overly clever, or overly good, or overly anything. He doesn't want to see how the wheels go around at the toilet table or in a woman's head or her heart; and it's the subtle, illusive little thing that he doesn't notice until he steps on her and finds her looking up adoringly at him under his nose that he idealizes."

"And marries," added the bachelor conclusively.

"And then forgets," sighed the widow, "while he goes off to amuse himself with the obvious person with peroxide hair and a straight-front figure. I don't know," she added tentatively, "that it's much fun being an ideal woman."

"Who said you were?" demanded the bachelor suddenly.

The widow started and turned pink to her chin.

"Oh--nobody--that is, several people, Mr. Travers."

"Had you refused them?" asked the bachelor thoughtfully.

The widow blushed a deeper pink and bent over her pale green rose so low that the bachelor could not see her eyes.

"Why--that is--I don't see what that has to do with it."

"It has everything to do with," replied the bachelor positively.

"And you haven't told me yet," continued the widow, suddenly changing the subject, "whom you consider the ideal woman."

"Don't you know?" asked the bachelor insinuatingly.

The widow shook her head without lifting her eyes.

"Well, then, she is--but so many of them have told you."

"You haven't," persisted the widow.

The bachelor sighed and rose to go.

"The ideal woman," he said, as he slipped on his gloves, "is--the woman you can't get. Is that the firelight playing on your pompadour?" he added, looking down upon the widow through half-closed eyes. "Do you know--for a moment--I thought it was a halo."

XII

NEW YEAR'S IRRESOLUTIONS.

"ISN'T it hard," said the widow, glancing ruefully at the holly-wreathed clock above the mantel-piece, "to know where to begin reforming yourself?"

"Great heavens!" exclaimed the bachelor, "you are not going to do anything like that, are you?"

The widow pointed solemnly to the hands of the clock, which indicated 11.30, and then to the calendar, on which hung one fluttering leaf marked December 31.

"It is time," she sighed, "to begin our mental housecleaning, to sweep out our collection of last year's follies, and dust off our petty sins and fling away our old vices and----"