"Now don't speak till you've thought, and don't think till I finish. As you yourself said, Washington's no place for us--at present. Anyhow, the way to get there right is to be sent there from the people--by the people. You are the wife of a public man, but you've had no training." "I--" she began. "Hear me first," he said, between entreaty and command. "You think I'm the one that's got it all to learn. Think again. The little tiddledywinks business that I've got to learn--all the value there is in the mass of balderdash about manners and dress--I can learn it in a few lessons. You can teach it to me in no time. But what you've got to learn--how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of, largely, a dressmaker's or a dancing-master's expression for lady-likeness--to learn all that is going to take time. And we must begin at once; for, as I told you, the house is afire." She opened her lips to speak. "No--not yet," said he. "One thing more. You've been thinking things about me. Well, do you imagine this busy brain of mine hasn't been thinking a few things about you? Why, Margaret, you need me even more than I need you, though I need you more than I'd dare try to tell you. You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose--REAL backbone. Primping and preening in carriages and parlors--THAT isn't life. It's the frosting on the cake. Now, you and I, we're going to have the cake itself. Maybe with, maybe without the frosting. BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE, MARGARET!" "So!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath when he had ended. "So! THIS is why you chose that five o'clock train and sent Selina back. You thought to--" He laughed as if echoing delight from her; he patted her enthusiastically on the knee. "You've guessed it! Go up head! I didn't want you to have time to say and do foolish things." She bit her lip till the blood came. Ringing in her ears and defying her efforts to silence them were those words of his about the cake and the frosting--"the cake, maybe with, maybe without frosting; BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE!" She started to speak; but it was no interruption from him that checked her, for he sat silent, looking at her with all his fiery strength of soul in his magnetic eyes. Again she started to speak; and a third time; and each time checked herself. This impossible man, this creator of impossible situations! She did not know how to begin, or how to go on after she should have begun. She felt that even if she had known what to say she would probably lack the courage to say it--that final-test courage which only the trained in self-reliance have. The door opened. A station attendant came in out of the frosty night and shouted: "Chicago Express! Express for--Buffalo! Chicago! Minneapolis! St. Paul!--the Northwest!--the Far West! All--a--BOARD!"