anything like the model wife you've picked out for me?" inquired the bachelor insinuatingly.

The widow flushed under the corner of her chiffon veil.

"Well," she acquiesced unwillingly, "she isn't particularly pretty nor brilliant and fascinating, and all that; but she's just the kind of a girl a man ought to marry."

"And never does!" finished the bachelor triumphantly, backing water and turning the canoe for mid-stream. "Of all kinds of women a man detests——"

"How many kinds of women are there?" cried the widow suddenly.

"How many women are there?" retorted the bachelor. "The variety is only limited by the number of feminine individuals. But fundamentally they can be divided into two classes, just as automobiles can be divided into gasoline and electric. There is the woman a man wants to marry, the kind that is stamped from birth for wifehood, the even-tempered, steady-going, comfortable kind of girl that you would like to tie to for life and with whom you know you would be perfectly contented—and utterly stupid. Every man has in mind his ideal wife; and nearly every man's ideal is of the calm, domestic, wholly good, wholly sweet sort, the sort that seems like a harbor away from the storm. But so often, just about as he has found this ideal, or before he has found her and before the sun of his summer day dream has risen the storm comes along——"

"The—what?"

"The tumultuous, impossible, adorable, unfathomable woman—the woman who may be good or bad, ugly or beautiful, but is always fascinating, alluring and irresistible. And she wrecks his little summer day dream and turns his snug harbor into a roaring whirlpool and carries him off in a tempest. Sometimes he marries her and sometimes he doesn't; but whether he does or does not, he is always spoiled for the other kind afterward."

"And if he does marry her," added the widow, trailing her fingers thoughtfully in the water, "he is always sorry and wishing he had married the other kind."

"Well," the bachelor laid his paddle across his knee, "what's the difference? If he had married the other kind he would always have been wishing he hadn't. Now if a man could only be allowed two wives——"

"One for week days and one for—holidays?" inquired the widow sarcastically.

"Yes," acquiesced the bachelor, "one for each side of him, the tame side and the untamed side. One to serve as a harbor and make him a home and fulfill his domestic longings and bring up his children and keep him sane and moral; and the other to amuse him and entertain him and inspire him and put the trimmings on life and the spice and flavor in the matrimonial dish."

"A sedative and a stimulant!" jeered the widow. "One to stir you up and one to calm you down; one to spur you forward and one to pull on the curb—a Hebe and a Minerva! And then you'd be running around demanding a Venus to make you forget the other two. Whatever woman a man marries, he invariably spends his life sighing for something different. If he is tied to a nice, soft sofa pillow, he longs for a backbone. If he marries a parlor ornament, he yearns for a kitchen utensil. If his wife has a Greek nose, he discovers afterward that what he really admires is pugs. If he picks out red hair or black, he will go blocks out of his way to pursue every yellow glint that catches his eye. And if he married a whole harem at once he would discover that what he really wanted was monogamy, and a single wife with a single idea. There aren't enough kinds of women in the world to fulfill any one man's idea of what a wife should be."

"And yet," sighed the bachelor, "I once knew a woman who would have done that—all by herself."

The widow looked unconvinced.

"Was she a model wife?" she inquired, skeptically.

"How do I know?" said the bachelor. "She wasn't my wife."

"Of course not!" cried the widow. "It is always the other man's wife who is our ideal——"

"She wasn't my ideal," protested the bachelor. "She was the storm that shattered my ideal and spoiled me for matrimony. She was a whole garage, a whole stable, a whole harem in one."

The widow looked distinctly disapproving.

"It's lucky," she said coldly, "that you escaped—a woman like—that!"

"But I haven't," protested the bachelor, laying down his paddle and leaning forward so that the ends of the widow's chiffon veil blew in his face. "She was the spice in life's pudding, the flavor, the sauce, the stimulant, the——"

"This canoe is tipping dreadfully," remarked the widow, but the disapproval had disappeared from her eyes.

"She was——"

"Why, I do believe it's growing dark, Mr. Travers."

"It is," agreed the bachelor. "Nobody can see——"

"See—what?" asked the widow, suddenly sitting up straight and fixing the bachelor with her eyes.

"How perfectly adorable and unfathomable and tumultuous——"

"Are you feeding me sugar, Mr. Travers?"

"Perhaps," acknowledged the bachelor, leaning back and picking up the paddle again, "but some day, when I'm ready, I'm going to stop feeding you sugar. I'm going to put on the curb bit."

"Why don't you do it now—Billy?" asked the widow, with a challenging glance from beneath her lashes.

"I can't," grumbled the bachelor, "while you are blowing that chiffon veil."

The widow took the two ends of the offensive thing and tied them deliberately under her chin.

"Some day," continued the bachelor, as he swung the canoe shoreward with a vigorous dip of the paddle, "I'm going to show you who's master. I'm going to marry you and then—"

"Be sorry!" laughed the widow.

"Of course," assented the bachelor, "but I'd be sorrier—if I didn't."

II

The Winning Card?

The widow laid down her oyster fork and gazed thoughtfully at the beautiful girl in blue chiffon sitting opposite the man with the squint.

"Don't generalize," she said, turning rebukingly to the bachelor. "You mean what makes the little man so fascinating?"

The bachelor jabbed an oyster viciously.

"Well," he grumbled, "what does make him so fascinating? Is it the squint or the cork——"

The widow looked at him reproachfully.

"Don't be envious," she said. "He might have two squints and yet be successful with women. Haven't you ever seen a runty, plain little man before, with nothing on earth, apparently, to recommend him except his sex, who could draw the women as a magnet does needles?"

The bachelor dropped his oyster and stared at the widow.

"It's hypnotism!" he declared with solemn conviction.

The widow laughed.

"It's nothing of the sort," she contradicted. "It's because he holds man's winning card and knows how to play it. Just observe the tender solicitude with which he consults her about that fish."

"You mean," inquired the bachelor suspiciously, "that he has a fascinating way?"

"That's all he needs," responded the widow promptly,