"I love you, I always have, and I always will--but I'm no home-wrecking, emotional being and I expect that you will resume our old relationships and I shall go on serving you and knowing my recompense will be a handsome farewell gift and a pension. "Oh, the business woman's life isn't all beer and skittles. We're expected to lie about our hearts, yet be as reliable as an adding machine about our columns of figures; to be shut away from the social world, thrown with men more hours a day than their wives see them and yet remain immovable, aloof, disinterested! Just good fellows, you know. Isn't it hideous to think I've really told the truth?" At this identical moment their platonic friendship, alias tropical twilight, ended, and Mary's evening star of romance rose to stay. But such being the case Steve was the last person in the world to try to convince her that it was so. All he said was: "I never appreciated you before. Please don't feel that telling me this will make any difference save that I'll stay aloof--as you suggest. I can forget it, somewhat, if that will make you feel any better about it. It is all quite true and equally hopeless--true things usually are--and if you like I'll send you home in the car, because you must be a trifle tired." "Thank you," she remembered answering as she told Steve's chauffeur where to drive. "You look as tired as before we went away," Luke complained that same night when Mary sat at her desk adding up expenses and making out checks. "Oh, no. This shade makes everyone look ghastly," she said. "I'll have to get a hump on and make my pile," he consoled. "I don't want my sister being all tired out before she's too old to have a good time." "A good time?" Mary repeated. "Are you inoculated, too?" "What's wrong with a good time? I guess Steve O'Valley plays all he likes!" "Yes, dear, I guess he does," Mary forced herself to answer. When Steve returned home that evening he found one of those impromptu dinner parties on hand instead of a formal engagement. They had become quite the fad in Bea's set. The idea was this--young matrons convened in the afternoon at one of their homes for cocktails and confidences; very likely Sezanne del Monte would drop in to read her last chapter or Gay Vondeplosshe would arrive brandishing his cane and telling everyone how beautiful the Italian villa was to be; and by and by they would gather round the piano to sing the latest songs; then when the clock struck six there would be a wild flutter and a suggestion: "Let's phone cook to bring over our dinner. Then our husbands can come along or not just as they like. We'll have a parlour picnic; and no one will bother about being dressed. And we'll go to the nickel dance hall later."