"Ah, then, you haven't quite spoiled her life; she has another chance. And the children?" He had been very fond of them, I knew. "I haven't done so much with my own life that I'd insist on controlling theirs." "You've done wonders," I assured him. "Jerry, honest, do you mind it so much, not having a wife and family?" "Oh, Lord, yes, Olivia; I need a wife the same as a man needs a watch, to keep the time of life for me." He faced me with a swift, sharp scrutiny. "Honest, do you mind?" "Sometimes," I admitted, "when I think of what's coming ... when I can't act any more." "You'll be leading them all still when you are seventy. You do better every season." He threw away his cigar and came and stood before me, preening his raven's wing which now had a little streak of white in it. "Olivia, what's the matter with you and me being married? We get on like everything." "There's more to it than that, Jerry." "Being in love, you mean? Well, I don't know that I would stick at a little thing like that." He was looking down at me with an effect of humour which I was glad to see covered a real anxiety about my answer. "I've been in love lots of times; I've been mad about several women. I don't feel that way about you, and I don't know that I care to. But if wanting you is loving, if worrying about you when you aren't quite up to yourself, and being proud of you when you are, if liking to be with you and wanting to read my manuscripts to you the minute I've written them, if owing you more than I owe any other woman and being glad to owe it, is loving you, why, I guess I love you enough for all practical purposes." "What would Tottie Lockwood say--or is it Dottie?" Miss Lockwood was Jerry's latest interest at the Winter Garden. "Oh, _she_? She isn't in a position to say anything. It's only vanity on her part and the lack of anything to do on mine. There'd be no time for Totties if you married me." "Jerry ... since you've asked me ... I suppose you know that I ... that I...." He put up an arresting hand. "I've guessed. There isn't anything you need to tell me. And I haven't an altogether clean record myself. But, I want you to know, Olivia, that there was never anything in my case that you could take exception, to so long as my wife was with me. I couldn't make her believe it but it's true. Except, of course, that I was a fool. I hope I'm done with that." "I'd want you to be a bit foolish about me, Jerry,--that is, if I make up my mind to it." I had to defend myself against the encouragement he got out of my admission. "But, Jerry, when did you begin to think about--what you've just said?" "About marrying you? Ever since that time I went down to your place ... when that Chichester girl...." "When I wouldn't take her place, a _pis aller_ merely. Well, suppose I had; suppose I had been ... what the Chichester girl wouldn't ... would you still have wanted to marry me?" I would not admit to myself why I had asked that question.