"--and to reach the great place you are entitled to. If I were a man, I would let nothing come between me and my career. A career! Would you sacrifice all that, Tim, just to get married?" "But, Peggy," exclaimed Timothy, "you would help me. At least, you wouldn't be a bit in the way." "You do say kind things to me, Tim," replied Peggy gratefully. "But it would never do. Even a man of your personality would find it hard to get on without friends and without influence; and very young married men have few friends and less influence. They are back numbers: nobody wants them. It's the rising young bachelors who go everywhere, and can command interest and popularity and fame. A wife would be a dreadful drag. She might make shipwreck of your life." Tim drew in his breath, and was on the point of making a gallant interjection of protest; but Peggy concluded swiftly:-- "So you _must_ establish yourself in the public eye before you settle down. Don't you agree with me?" She lay back in her chair again, looking interrogatively up into Timothy's perplexed countenance. "There's a good deal in what you say, Peggy," he admitted. "But I simply could not leave you in the cart, after--" A sudden inspiration seized him. "Look here--I have it!" he cried. "Supposing we get married in five years from now--what?" Peggy was silent, and Tim waited impatiently for her to make up her mind. At last she spoke. "It would be a very difficult five years for you, Tim. Imagine yourself going about this big world, meeting all sorts of famous and influential people, and growing more and more famous and influential yourself. Girls would be falling in love with you--" "Oh, I say!" exclaimed Timothy, much confused. "Yet all the time," continued Peggy in a tragic voice, "you would be able to give them no encouragement, because you felt bound to come at the end of five years and marry _me_--getting on for thirty! It wouldn't be a very comfortable five years for either of us, would it?" By this time Timothy was once more striding about the room. But he was not posing now: he was thinking hard. Peggy sat motionless. Her face was serene, but her hands gripped the arms of the chair until her pink finger-nails grew white. Once she wondered where Philip was. She did not know that he was walking up and down Sloane Street in the fog, fighting with all the devils in Hell. At last Timothy appeared to arrive at some decision. He came and sat down upon the edge of Peggy's chair. "Peggy," he announced, "you have a sense of proportion quite unusual in your sex. You are the most farsighted woman I have ever known." "I believe I am," said Peggy. "And the most unselfish," added the youthful Grand Turk on the arm of her chair. "I'm not so sure of that," said Peggy.