started on that race-course I purpose to come in a winner." "And you would saddle yourself with a wife many years your senior?" she asked wonderingly. But she thrilled again, and unconsciously moderated her gait still further; they were but a few steps from her home. "I am thirty-four. I am sorry that I have impressed you as looking too young to be taken seriously, but you will admit that if a man doesn't know his own mind when he is verging toward middle age, he never will. But if I were only twenty-five, it would make no difference. I would marry you like a shot. I never[Pg 25] have given a thought to marrying before. Girls don't interest me. They show their hand too plainly. I've always had a sort of ideal and you fill it." [Pg 25] It was characteristic of Mrs. Balfame's well-ordered mind that her intention to murder her husband did not intrude itself into this unique and provocative hour. She had never indulged in a passing desire to marry again, and hers was not the order of mind that somersaults. But she was willing to "let herself go," for the sake of the experience; for the first time in her twenty odd years of married life to loiter in a leafy shadowy street with a man who loved her and made no secret of it. "I wonder?" She stared up at him, curiosity in her eyes. "Wonder what?" "If it is love?" He laughed unmusically. "I am not surprised that you ask that question—you, who know no more of love than if you had been a castaway on a desert island since the age of ten. Never mind. I've planted a seed. It will sprout. Think and think again. You owe me that much—and yourself. I know that six months hence you will have divorced Dave Balfame, and that you will marry me as soon as the law allows." "Never! Never!" She was laughing now, but with all the gay coquetry of youth, not merely the eidola of her own. They had arrived at the gate of the Balfame Place, which faced the avenue and a large street lamp. She put the gate between them with a quicker movement than she commonly indulged in and held out her hand. "No more nonsense! If I were young and free[Pg 26]—who knows? But—but—forty-two!" She choked but brought it out. "Now go home and think over all the nice girls you know and
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