"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West." "You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once." "The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh, if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go by the board--but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half portion' of life." "Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things come tumbling." "Very well; then I shall be wise--I suppose I shall be--and I'll do it quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at once, and be accepted--so that I shall be able to look my dear old father in the face again--and then, after I'm married--well, don't blame me for anything that happens." "I'm sure you'll be happy with him--it's only your silly notions. He's in love with you." "That makes me hesitate. He really is a man--I like him--see this letter--a long review from the Arcady _Lyre_ of the 'poem' he wrote, a poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite enthusiastic over it, too,--written from some awful place in Montana." "What more could you ask? He'll be kind." "You don't understand, Muetterchen. He seems too decent to marry that way--and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me out--oh, think of what marriage _is_--he'd _have_ to find it out--I couldn't _act_ long--doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then." "You are morbid, child." "But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training--and I shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn--well, a great deal that he doesn't know about women." She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence: "Oh, if a man only _could_ live up to the verses he cuts out of magazines!" CHAPTER XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts