about as much use for an electric coupé, under my present conditions in life, as I had for a perambulator.

"Grace, you're—indelicate!" mother said, her voice trembling. "Guilford's a man!"

"A man's a man—especially a Kentuckian!" I answered. "You're not shocked at my mention of colts and—and things, are you, Guilford?"

My betrothed sat down and lifted from the bridge of his nose that badge of civilization—a pair of rimless glasses. He polished them with a dazzling handkerchief, then replaced the handkerchief into the pocket of the most faultless coat ever seen. He smoothed his already well-disciplined hair, and brushed away a speck of dust from the toe of his shoe. From head to foot he fairly bristled with signs of civic improvement.

"I am shocked at your reception of your mother's kind thoughtfulness," he said.

He waited a little while before saying it, for hesitation was his way of showing disapproval. Yet you must not get the impression from this that Guilford was a bad sort! Why, no woman could ride in an elevator with him for half a minute without realizing that he was the flower-of-chivalry sort of man! He always had a little way of standing back from a woman, as if she were too sacred to be approached, and in her presence he had a habit of holding his hat clasped firmly against the buttons of his coat. You can forgive a good deal in a man if he keeps his hat off all the time he's talking to you!

"'Shocked?'" I repeated.

"Your mother always plans for your happiness, Grace."

"Of course! Don't you suppose I know that?" I immediately asked in an injured tone. It is always safe to assume an injured air when you're arguing with a man, for it gives him quite as much pleasure to comfort you as it does to hurt you.

"I didn't—mean anything!" he hastened to assure me.

"Guilford merely jumped at the chance of your freeing yourself of this newspaper slavery," mother interceded. "You know what a humiliation it is to him—just as it is to me and to every member of the—Christie family."

My betrothed nodded so violently in acquiescence that his glasses flew off in space.

"You know that I am a Kentuckian in my way of regarding women, Grace," he plead. "I can't bear to see them step down from the pedestal that nature ordained for them!"

I turned and looked him over—from the crown of his intensely aristocratic fair head to the tip of his aristocratic slim foot.

"A Kentuckian?"

"Certainly!"

"A Kentuckian?" I repeated reminiscently. "Why, Guilford Blake, you ought to be olive-skinned—and black-eyed—and your shoes ought to turn up at the toes—and your head ought to be covered by a red fez—and you ought to sit smoking through a water-bottle of an evening, in front of your—your—"

"Grace!" stormed mother, rising suddenly to her feet. "I will not have you say such things!"

"What things?" I asked, drawing back in hurt surprise.

"H-harems!" she uttered in a blushing whisper, but Guilford caught the word and squared his shoulders importantly.

"But, I say, Grace," he interrupted, his face showing that mixture of anger and pleased vanity which a man always shows when you tell him that he's a dangerous tyrant, or a bold Don Juan—or both. "You don't think I'm a Turk—do you?"

"I do."

He sighed wistfully.

"If I were," he said, shaking his head, "I'd have caught you—and veiled you—long before this."

I looked at him intently.

"You mean—"

"That I shouldn't have let you delay our marriage this way! Why should you, pray, when my financial affairs have changed so in the last year?"

I rose from my place beside the new piano, breaking gently into his plea.

"It isn't that!" I attempted to explain, but my voice failed drearily. "You ought to know that—finances hadn't anything to do with it. I haven't kept from marrying you all these years because we were both so poor—then, last year when you inherited your money—I didn't keep from marrying you because you were so rich!"

"Then, what is it?" he asked gravely, and mother looked on as eagerly for my answer as he did. This is one advantage about a life-long betrothal. It gets to be a family institution. Or is that a disadvantage?

"I—don't know," I confessed, settling back weakly.

"I don't think you do!" mother observed with considerable dryness.

"Well, this business of your getting to be a famous compiler of literature may help you get your bearings," Guilford kept on, after an awkward little pause. "You have always said that you wished to exercise your own wings a little before we married, and I have given in to you—although I don't know that it's right to humor a woman in these days and times. Really, I don't know that it is."

"Oh, you don't?"

"No—I don't. But we're not discussing that now, Grace! What I'm trying to get at is that this offer means a good deal to you. Of course, it is only the beginning of your career—for these fellows will think up other things for you to do—and it will give you a way of earning money that won't take you up a flight of dirty office stairs every day. Understand, I mean for just a short while—as long as you insist upon earning your own living."

"And the honor!" mother added. "You could have your pictures in good magazines!"

I stifled a yawn, for, to tell the truth, the conflict had made me nervous and weary.

"At all events, I must decide!" I exclaimed, starting again to my feet. "Somehow, the office atmosphere isn't exactly conducive to deep thought—and I've had so little time since morning to get away by myself and thresh matters out."

Mother looked at me incredulously.

"Will you please tell me just what you mean, Grace?" she asked.

"I mean that I must get away—I've imagined that I ought to take some serious thought, weigh the matter well, so to speak—before I write to the Coburn-Colt Publishing Company. In other words, I have to decide."

"Decide?" mother repeated, her face filled with piteous amazement. "Decide?"

"Decide?" Guilford said, taking up the strain complainingly.

"If you'll excuse me!" I answered, starting toward the door, then turning with an effort at nonchalance, for their sakes, to wave them a little adieu. "Suppose you keep on playing 'Knowest thou the land where the citron-flower blooms,' Guilford—for I am filled with wanderlust right now, and this music will help out Uncle Lancelot's presentation of the matter considerably!"

"What?"

"I'm going to listen to the voices," I explained. "All day long grandfather and Uncle Lancelot have been busy making the fur fly in my conscience!"

Mother darted across the room and caught my hand.

"You don't mean to say that you have scruples—scruples—Grace Christie?"

She couldn't have hated smallpox worse—in me.

"Honest Injun, I don't know!" I admitted. "Of course, it does seem absurd to ponder over what a family row might be raised in the Seventh Circle of Nirvana by the publication of these old love-letters, but—"

"James Mackenzie Christie died in 1849," she declared vehemently. "Absurd! It is insane!"

"That's what the Uncle Lancelot part of my intelligence keeps telling me," I laughed. "But—good heavens! you just ought to hear the grandfather argument."

"What does he—what does that silly Salem conscience of yours say against the publication of the letters?" she asked grudgingly.

I sat down again.

"Shall I tell