"I may be. How would you like to keep house up there?" He caught at the disconsolate look in her face and added: "Don't worry, I know better than to ask that of you. Now listen, Doris, we've been good chums too long to fool ourselves. You've changed and you're going to change a lot more. Do you really like this sort of life?" "I adore it!" "Dressing up, parading yourself, tearing around from one function to another." She nodded, her face suddenly clouded over. "Then why in the world do you want me? There are fifty--a hundred men you'll find will play this game better than I can." He had dropped his tone of sarcasm and was looking at her earnestly, but the questions he put were put to his own conscience. "Why do you act this way just when you've come back?" she said, frightened at his sudden ascendency. "Because I sometimes think that we both know that nothing is going to happen," he said directly; "only it's hard to face the truth. Isn't that it?" "No, that isn't it. I love to be admired, I love pretty things and society and all that. Why shouldn't I? But I do care for you, Bojo; you've always brought out--" she was going to say, "the best in me," but changed her mind and instead added: "I am very proud of you-- I always would be. Don't look at me like that. What have I done?" "Nothing," he said, drawing a breath. "You can't help being what you are. Really, Doris, in the whole room you're the loveliest here. No one has your style or a smile as bewitching as yours. There is a fascination about you." She was only half reassured. "Well, then, don't talk so idiotically." "Idiotic is exactly the word," he said with a laugh, and the compliments he had paid her in a spirit of self-raillery awakened a little feeling of tenderness after his teasing had shown him that, according to her lights, she cared more than he had thought. All the same when he rose to hurry downtown, he was under no illusions: if opportunity permitted him to fit into the social scheme of things, well and good; if not-- His thoughts recurred to Fred DeLancy's words: "There are three ways of making money: to have it left to you, to earn it, and to marry it." He broke off angrily, troubled with doubts, and for the hundredth time he found himself asking: "Now why the deuce can't I be mad in love with a girl who cares for me, who's a beauty and has everything in the world! What is it?" For he had once been very much in love when he was a schoolboy and Doris had been just a schoolgirl, with open eyes and impulsive direct ways, like a certain young lady, with breathless, laughing lips who had come sliding into his life on the comical tail of a scampering terrier. CHAPTER IV BOJO'S FATHER