"I love him as much as I am likely to love anyone," responded Peaches--like a young Portia, so stately and serious. "And even if he is half a head shorter than I am he has a kind heart and he's a gentleman." "And not over sixty years old!" I retorted. "Oh, Peaches, do you really want to do it?" Suddenly she was serious. The defensively bantering light went out of her changeful eyes. "Don't, Free!" she pleaded. "Yes, I do want to. I want to be a reasonable being--to make the best life I can for myself since I must go on living. I don't want to be a coward. I am still young and I haven't seen much of the world. Riches, art treasures, cultured people, and things--social position--there must be joy in these things or folks would not struggle for them so! And since they must be filling up the emptiness in a whole lot of lives I'm going to have a try at them too. Don't be afraid for me. I know just what I am doing. I know that I shall never care again. But I can like. And I can live, and I'm going to use my old beau to help me get the most out of life that I can when--when--well, you know, only don't say it, please!" She was wonderful. So big and beautiful and full of health and common sense. I could not but admire her, though, of course, a few maidenly tears and vows of lifelong fidelity to the heroic dead would have been more suitable. But things had already gone too far for that. At the time the above-recorded conversation took place we were standing upon the steps of the Ritz in New York, waiting for the car which was to convey us up the river. Mr. Markheim had not expected us for another week and so hadn't been at the hotel to meet us, but was sending his chauffeur. And in a way Peaches' words reassured me. After all one must eventually resign oneself to fate, and if one had the good sense to take fate by the horns and as Peaches would say "beat him to it"--why, so much the better. We could all settle down to watch her live happily enough ever after if her program worked out. But would it? Despite her assurance I felt a faint misgiving. My dear father used always to say: "Never you girls marry until Mister Right comes along." And we were brought up to honor and obey our parents--with the result that at the respective ages of fifty and sixty we girls were still single. However, I digress.