bankers had told him he could afford whatever he wanted. Suppose he wanted a woman, what sort of woman should he want?

Beauty? Must she be beautiful? From the quickening of his pulse as he bent to peer into fair face after fair face with the added interest of this idea, he realized that he enjoyed and feared beauty at least as greatly as the most of men.

Class? In a flashed thought of his mother, a Stansbury of the Stansburys of Virginia, he decided on that. Class she must have.

And kind she must be—tested kind to the core. Tall, healthy, strong, of course. Graceful if possible. Gracious, but not too much so. Frank and at the same time reserved. Educated up to full appreciation of, but not superiority to himself. Half boy and at least one-and-a-half girl.

That would be plenty to start on, even for the most deliberate and calculating of choosers, which he felt himself dispositionally as well as financially fitted to be. From what he knew of the difficult sex in the rough, he should need time and study to decide accurately just how real were appearances in a finished feminine, trained from infancy, so he had heard, to cover all inner and outer deficiencies. Plenty of time and a steady nerve—that was all he should need to learn her nature, as he had learned the tempers of the most refractory of horses. By the time he was satisfied as to these mentally outlined points, others doubtless would have suggested themselves.

Pape was pleased with his theories, the first dressed-up ones he had evolved on the subject. If all men would go into this vital matter of self-selectiveness, there would be fewer prosperous lawyers, he congratulated himself. Better have a care before marriage than a flock of them—of another sort—after. Firstly, a choice made from personal preference, then the most direct course toward acquaintanceship, a deliberate inspection, a steady eye, a cool nerve——

Suddenly Pape stiffened, body and mind. His gaze fixed on a face within a box on his own level, some ten or so away, just where they began to curve toward the stage. The face was young—childlike in animation and outline. Its cheeks were oval and flushed, its lips red-limned and laughing, its eyes a flashing black. And black was the mass of curls that haloed it—cut short—bobbed.

A brilliant enough, impish enough, barbaric enough little head it was to catch and hold the attention of any strange young man. But that which particularly interested Pape 

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