"I told you that you were probably the only woman present who wasn't purchasable." "Not understanding you as well as I do now, I was quite shocked. Besides, it was so unfair. Nearly all of them were most respectable married people." "Bought by their most respectable husbands. Some of 'em bought away from other husbands. But I gave you credit for not being on that market--or any other. And now you're trying to corrupt my professional virtue." "Ban! I'm not." "What else is it when you try to use your influence to have me fire our nice, new critic?" "If that's being corruptible, I wonder if any of us are incorruptible." She stretched upward an idle hand and fondled a spray of freesia that drooped against her cheek. "Ban; there's something I've been waiting to tell you. Tertius Marrineal wants to marry me." "I've suspected as much. That would settle the obnoxious critic, wouldn't it! Though it's rather a roundabout way." "Ban! You're beastly." "Yes; I apologize," he replied quickly. "But--have I got to revise my estimate of you, Betty? I should hate to." "Your estimate? Oh, as to purchasability. That's worse than what you've just said. Yet, somehow, I don't resent it. Because it's honest, I suppose," she said pensively. "No: it wouldn't be a--a market deal. I like Tertius. I like him a lot. I won't pretend that I'm madly in love with him. But--" "Yes; I know," he said gently, as she paused, looking at him steadily, but with clouded eyes. He read into that "but" a world of opportunities; a theater of her own--the backing of a powerful newspaper--wealth--and all, if she so willed it, without interruption to her professional career. "Would you think any the less of me?" she asked wistfully. "Would you think any the less of yourself?" he countered. The blossoming spray broke under her hand. "Ah, yes; that's the question after all, isn't it?" she murmured. Meantime, Gardner, the eternal journalist, fostering a plan of his own, was gathering material from Guy Mallory who had come in late. "What gets me," he said, looking over at the host, "is how he can do a day's work with all this social powwow going on." "A day's? He does three days' work in every one. He's the hardest trained mind in the business. Why, he could sit down here this minute, in the middle of this room, and dictate an editorial while keeping up his end in the general talk. I've seen him do it." "He must be a wonder at concentration." "Concentration? If he didn't invent it, he perfected it. Tell you a story. Ban doesn't go in for any game except polo. One day some of the fellows at The Retreat got talking golf to him--" "The Retreat? Good Lord! He doesn't belong to The Retreat, does he?"