[168]

"And which you always do keep, in spite of all your New Year's vows," remarked the widow ironically.

"Huh!" The bachelor laughed cynically. "It's our New Year's vows that help us to keep 'em. The very fact that a fellow has sworn to forego anything, whether it's a habit or a girl, makes it more attractive. I've thrown away a whole box of cigars with the finest intentions in the world and then gotten up in the[169] middle of the night to fish the pieces out of the waste basket. And that midnight smoke was the sweetest I ever had. It was sweeter than the apples I stole when I was a kid and than the kisses I stole when——"

[169]

"If you came here to dilate on the joys of sin, Mr. Travers," began the widow coldly.

"And," proceeded the bachelor, "I've made up my mind to stop flirting with a girl, because I found out that she was beginning to—to——"

"I understand," interrupted the widow sympathetically.

"And by jove!" finished the bachelor, "I had to restrain myself to keep from going back and proposing to her!"

"How lucky you did!" commented the widow witheringly.[170]

[170]

"But I wouldn't have," explained the bachelor ruefully, "if the girl had restrained herself."

"Nevertheless," repeated the widow, "is was lucky—for the girl."

"Which girl?" asked the bachelor. "The girl I broke off with or the girl that came afterward?"

"I suppose," mused the widow, ignoring the levity and leaning over to arrange a bunch of violets at her belt, "that is why it is so difficult for a man to keep a promise or a vow—even a marriage vow."

"Oh, I don't know." The bachelor leaned back and regarded the widow's coronet braid through the smoke from his cigar. "It isn't the marriage vows that are so difficult to keep. It's the fool vows a man makes before marriage and the fool[171] promises he makes afterward that he stumbles over and falls down 

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