"Don't go back into February, please! February is such a rotten month with me. Well now, what's your complaint?" "Just what I said," explained Reginald. "You think you have a new hero and heroine every week, but you're mistaken. We are always the same; and, personally, I am tired of proposing week after week to the same girl." There was just something about Reginald that I seemed to recognize. Just the very slightest something. "Then who are you really," I asked, "if you're always the same person?" "Yourself. Not really yourself, of course, but yourself as you fondly imagine you are." I laughed scornfully. "You're nothing of the sort. How ridiculous! The hero of my own stories, indeed! Myself idealized--then I suppose you think you're rather a fine fellow?" I sneered. "I suppose you think I am." "No, I don't. I think you are a silly ass. Saying I'm my own hero. I'm nothing of the sort. And I suppose Dorothy is me, too?" "I'm the girl you're in love with," said Dorothy. "Idealized." "I'm not in love with any one," I denied indignantly. "Then your ideal girl." "Ah, you might well be that," I smiled. I looked at her longingly. She was wonderfully beautiful. I went a little closer to her. "And we've come," said Reginald, putting his oar in again, "to say that we're sick of getting engaged every week." I ignored Reginald altogether. "Are you really sick of him?" I asked Dorothy. "Yes!" "As sick of him as I am?" "I--I daresay." "Then let's cross him out," I said. And I went back to the table and took up my pen. "Say the word," I said to Dorothy. "Steady on," began Reginald uneasily. "All I meant was--" "Personally, as you know," I said to Dorothy, "I think he's a silly ass. And if you think so too--" "I say, look here, old chap--" Dorothy nodded. I dipped the pen in the ink. "Then out he goes," I said, and I drew a line through him. When I looked up only Dorothy was there.... "Dorothy!" I said. "At last!" "But my name isn't really Dorothy, you know," she said with a smile. "It's Dorothy this week, and last week it was Phyllis, and the week before--" "Then what is it really? Tell me! So that I may know my ideal when I see her again." I got ready to write the name down. I dipped my pen in the ink again, and I drew a line through Dorothy, and then I looked up questioningly at her, and... Fool, fool! She was gone! II faut vivre. You'll see the story in one of the papers this week. You'll recognize it, because he is called Harold, and she is called Lucy. At the end of the second column he proposes and she accepts him. Lucy--of all names! It serves them right.