he quoted with dramatic intonation, adding helpfully: "Matthew Arnold. Or is it Arnold Bennett? Anyway, think how far away those places are," he pleaded. "From you!" he concluded. A little decided frown crept between her eyebrows. "I've accepted you as a gentleman on trust," she began, when he broke in: "Don't do it. It's a fearfully depressing thing to be reminded that you're a gentleman on trust and expected to live up to it. Think how it cramps one's style, not to mention limiting one's choice of real estate. A gentleman may stake his future happiness and his hope of a home on the toss of a coin, but he mustn't presume to want to see the other party to the gamble again, even if she's the only thing in the whole sweep of his horizon worth seeing. Is that fair? Where is Eternal Justice, I ask you, when such things--" "Oh, do stop!" she implored. "I don't think you're sane." "No such claim is put forth on behalf of the accused. He confesses to complete loss of mental equilibrium since--let me see--since 11.15 A.M." Here the Mordaunt Estate, who had been doing some shrewd thinking on his own behalf, interposed. "I'd rather rent to two than one," he said insinuatingly. "More reliable and steady with the rent. Settin' aside the young feller's weak eyes, you're a nice-matched pair. Gittin' a license is easy, if you know the ropes. I'd even be glad to go with you to--" "As to not being married," broke in the butterfly, with the light of a great resolve in her eye, "this gentleman may speak for himself. I am." "Am what?" queried the Estate. "Married." "Damn!" exploded the young man. "I mean, congratulations and all that sort of thing. I--I'm really awfully sorry. You'll forgive my making such an ass of myself, won't you?" To her troubled surprise there was real pain in the eyes which he turned rather helplessly away from her. Had she kept her own gaze fixed on them, she would have experienced a second surprise a moment later, at a sudden alteration and hardening of their expression. For his groping regard had fallen upon her left hand, which was gloved. Now, a wedding ring may be put on and off at will, but the glove, beneath which it has been once worn, never thereafter quite regains the maidenly smoothness of the third finger. The butterfly's gloves were not new, yet there showed not the faintest trace of a ridge in the significant locality. While admitting to himself that the evidence fell short of conclusiveness, the young man decided to accept it as a working theory and to act, win or lose, do or die, upon the hopeful hypothesis that his delightful but elusive companion was a li--that is to say, an inventor. He would give that invention the run of its young life! "We--ell," the Mordaunt Estate was saying, "that's too bad. Ain't a widdah lady are you?" "My husband is in France." With a prayer that his theory was correct, the young man rushed in where many an angel might have feared to tread. "Maybe he'll stay there," he surmised.