class="pnext">"I am not like that," Gertrude murmured reflectively, "and you know it, Ranny."

"Of course not," I guiltily assented.

"I know," she tapped my cheek with a playful finger—Gertrude can be very charming if she thinks of it—"I know perfectly what I want to do. And when I make up my mind to do a thing I stick to it."

And so she does, the clever girl!

"I wish I were like you," I muttered. "I am a sort of drifter, I'm afraid."

"That's why you need a manager," laughed Gertrude. "Wait till you've got me. Then you won't be just running after books and telling yourself what you're going to do some day. You'll be doing, publishing, lecturing; you'll be known—famous."

"Oh my heavens!" I cried out in a terror, throwing up a defensive hand. "I think I'll run away."

"Too late," she smiled, with a cool archness. When Gertrude smiles she is exceedingly handsome. "I've ordered my trousseau. You wouldn't leave me waiting at the City Hall, would you?"

"I might," I answered, smiling back at her. "If there should happen to be a book auction that morning. And it's only a subway fare back to your flat."

"Now, this is the program," she announced, assuming her magisterial tone, which instantaneously reduces me to a spineless worm before her. "You will come to my flat on the twenty-fourth at ten o'clock. Then we shall drive down in a taxi to the City Hall and get the license—or whatever they call it—"

"Lucky you'll be there," I could not help murmuring. "I should probably get a dog license or a motor-car license instead of the correct one—"

"Then," went on Gertrude, very properly ignoring me, "we can have the alderman of the day sing the necessary song."

"He may want to sing an encore—or kiss the bride," I warned her.

"He won't want to kiss me when I look at him," answered Gertrude imperturbably. Nor will he! "Then," she added, "we can stop here at your place and pick up your hand luggage, and mine on the way to the Grand Central Station. You can send your trunk the day before and I'll send mine. No time lost, you see, no waste, no foolishness."

"Perfect efficiency, in short—"

"Yes," said Gertrude, "you'll probably forget some important detail in the arrangement, but there's time enough to drill you into it the next three weeks."

"Forget," I repeated, somewhat dazedly, I admit. "What is there to forget—except possibly my name, age or color?"

"You needn't worry," flashed Gertrude. "I'll remember those for you—when you need them. I meant," she explained, "about your trunk or railway tickets and so on. But anyway, it doesn't matter. I'll remind you of everything the day before."

I promised to tie a knot in my handkerchief.

"And may I ask," I ventured, "where we are going?"

"I haven't decided yet," Gertrude informed me. "I'll let you know later, Ranny dear."

There is something very wholesome and complete about Gertrude. That is the reason, I suppose, I have so long been fond of her. How she can put up with a dreamer like me is more than I can grasp. Without any picturesque or romantic significance to the phrase, I am a sort of beach comber, sunning myself in her cloudless energy on the indolent sands of life. Every one either tells me or implies that Gertrude is far too good for me. Nor do I doubt it. But I wish we could go on as we are without exposing her to the inconvenience of being married to me. But Gertrude knows best.

"Won't you stay and share my humble crust this evening?" I asked her as she rose to go.

"No, thanks, Ranny," she smiled, somewhat enigmatically, I thought. "We shall often dine together—afterwards."

"Of course," I agreed flippantly. "We may even meet at the races."

"I promised," said Gertrude, "to dine at the Club with Stella Blackwelder—to settle some committee matters before I go away. Shall you be alone, poor thing?"

"Yes—but that doesn't matter. I am often alone. I prop up a book against a glass candlestick and the dinner is gone before I am aware of it."

"It might as well be sawdust, for all you know," laughed Gertrude.

"So it might," I told her, "except that Griselda can do better than sawdust. I might, of course," I added, "call up Dibdin and have him feast with me."

"Your trampy friend," commented Gertrude. "Yes, better do it. I don't like to think of you so much alone."

"Now, that is very sweet of you, my dear. I'll do exactly that."

Her cool lips touched mine for an instant and she was gone.

CHAPTER II

To my shame I must record that, once I was alone, the appalling fact of marriage overwhelmed me like a landslide. With a sense of suffocation and wild struggle I longed to do in earnest what I had threatened to do in jest, to run away, blindly, madly, anywhere, to freedom, as far as ever I could go.

When I should have been rejoicing, I desired, in a manner, to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. I thought upon Lincoln, a brave man if ever one there was, who had paled before the thought of marriage and wrote consoling letters to another in similar case. When I ought to have been feeling at my most virile, I felt unmanned.

Yet, was I a boy to be a prey to these emotions? At twenty-nine surely a man should know his own mind and be in possession of himself. Never before had I doubted my way in life. In a world where every one who has no money proceeds with energy to make it, and every one who has a little tirelessly labors to acquire more, I had wittingly and of full purpose turned my life away from the market place and toward a studious devotion to books. On my compact income of less than two hundred and fifty dollars monthly left me by generous parents, I was able to maintain my modest apartment in Twelfth Street and to live a life, purposeless in the eyes of some, no doubt, but which to me is priceless.

That slender income and the old Scotchwoman, Griselda Dow, with her Biblical austerity and North British economy, surround my existence with the comfort of a cushion. Because two sparrows sold for one farthing, was to Griselda a reason and an incentive for miracles of thrift. To change all this in three weeks—and I have not yet informed Griselda! In a welter of agitation I began to pace the room.

Perhaps I am a fool to harbor such emotions, but I confess that the sight of my pleasant study, covered to the ceiling with the books that I love, and so many of which I have gathered, fills me with a poignant melancholy. To uproot all this or to change it violently seems like a sin I cannot bring myself to commit. How had I come to think of committing it?

Gertrude is, of course, a splendid girl. With all her energy, she can yet sympathize with the mild successes of a poor bookworm and listen with patience to the tales of