She made a little grimace.

"My dear man," she confessed, "so am I. After all, though, I am not sure that the money makes all the difference. You see, if he really were too poor--or rather if his lawyers couldn't raise the money to send to me--I fancy that I should feel just the same."

The publisher turned his chair round towards the fire. He was a man of barely middle age, although his black hair was besprinkled with grey and growing a little thin at the temples. His features were good, but his face was a little thin, and his clothes were scarcely as tidy, or the appointments of his office so comfortable as his name and position in the publishing world might have warranted. Marcia, who had been looking at him while he read, leaned forward and brushed the cigarette ash from his coat sleeve.

"Such an untidy man!" she declared, straightening his tie. "I am not at all sure that you deserve to have lady clients calling upon you. Were you late last night?"

"A little," he confessed.

"That means about one or two, I suppose," she went on reprovingly.

"I dined at the club and stayed on," he told her. "There was nothing else to do except work, and I was a little tired of that."

"Any fresh stuff in--interesting stuff, I mean?"

He shook his head.

"Three more Russian novels," he replied, "all in French and want translating, of course. The only one I have read is terribly grim and sordid. I dare say it would sell. I am going to read the other two before I decide anything. Then perhaps you'll help me."

"Of course I will," she promised. "I do wish, though, James, you wouldn't stay at the club so late. How many whiskies and sodas?"

"I didn't count," he confessed.

She sighed.

"I know what that means! James, why aren't you a little more human? You get heaps of invitations to nice houses. Much better go out and make some women friends. You ought to marry, you know."

"I am quite ready to when you will marry me," he retorted.

 Prev. P 35/218 next