"H-harems!" she uttered in a blushing whisper, but Guilford caught the word and squared his shoulders importantly.

"But, I say, Grace," he interrupted, his face showing that mixture of anger and pleased vanity which a man always shows when you tell him that he's a dangerous tyrant, or a bold Don Juan—or both. "You don't think I'm a Turk—do you?"

"I do."

He sighed wistfully.

"If I were," he said, shaking his head, "I'd have caught you—and veiled you—long before this." 49

49

I looked at him intently.

"You mean—"

"That I shouldn't have let you delay our marriage this way! Why should you, pray, when my financial affairs have changed so in the last year?"

I rose from my place beside the new piano, breaking gently into his plea.

"It isn't that!" I attempted to explain, but my voice failed drearily. "You ought to know that—finances hadn't anything to do with it. I haven't kept from marrying you all these years because we were both so poor—then, last year when you inherited your money—I didn't keep from marrying you because you were so rich!"

"Then, what is it?" he asked gravely, and mother looked on as eagerly for my answer as he did. This is one advantage about a life-long betrothal. It gets to be a family institution. Or is that a disadvantage?

"I—don't know," I confessed, settling back weakly. 50

50

"I don't think you do!" mother observed with considerable dryness.

"Well, this business of your getting to be a famous compiler of literature may help you get your bearings," Guilford kept on, after an awkward little pause. "You have always said that you wished to exercise your own wings a little before we married, and I have given in to you—although I don't know that it's right to humor a woman in these days and times. Really, I don't know that it is."

"Oh, you don't?"

"No—I don't. But we're not 

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