An understanding with Lolita which contained certain qualifying clauses was one of the net results of the Adventure of the Lost Dirigible. Jimmy filed a number of demurrers, but they were over-ruled as soon as they were entered on the docket. He had been foolish enough to imagine on the celebrated morning after the night before that a perceptible scent of orange blossoms clogged the circumambient air, but this belief was soon dissipated by the young lady herself. “I can’t get married, Jimmy,” she said earnestly, “until I find out about my career.” “What’s that got to with it?” “Why, just—why, everything. I was reading an article only the other day by Mary Garden in which she said that marriage cramped the career of a woman on the stage. She said that husbands were a handicap—that they held you back with the tail end of the procession and kept you from getting on. She said——” Jimmy broke in with a scornful laugh. “I suppose she mentioned Mrs. Fiske and Laurette Taylor and Ethel Barrymore and Blanche Bates and all the other selling platers who’ve been left at the post because they were foolish enough to enter the matrimonial stakes,” he scoffed. “It’s really too bad about ’em. It looked once as if they had a chance.” Her mouth stiffened at this and she tossed her head with a little gesture that spelled stubborn defiance. “Well—anyway—,” she said, “I’m going to see how it works—for a little while. Maybe there isn’t going to be any career for me beyond—well, beyond ‘Secret Service Sallie.’ If there isn’t I might possibly——” She paused thoughtfully. Jimmy’s scornful mood had passed and he looked at her appealingly. “You might possibly what?” he ventured, cautiously. “There isn’t goin’ to be _another_ catch in it, is there?” “I’m afraid there is,” she replied, quietly. “You’ll have to settle down some place first. I don’t think I’d ever learn how to keep house permanently in a hotel bed-room and besides——” Again a disturbing pause. Jimmy was rapidly becoming a pitiful object to behold. “Get it all out of your system, sister,” he said, weakly. “I’m a glutton for punishment.” “Well,” she resumed evenly, “besides settling down you’d have to have some money in the bank—quite a little. That’s the most important thing. There was a girl in our town once who ran off with a fellow in the show business and lived a hand-to-mouth sort of a life for several seasons after passing up a lot of good chances among the boys she knew. She’s back selling stockings in Boyd’s Emporium on First avenue now and she looks kind of faded out and tired. I like you a lot, Jimmy, and you’ve treated me better than I deserved and you’re the nicest fellow I ever knew, but we’ve got to be sensible and wait and see how things work out. Won’t you—please?”