"It would give a man a chance to settle down and attend to business." "And give his wife a chance to help him." "By Jove, I'm going to propose that to Frances the day she lands!" he exclaimed. He was finishing his last doughnut. Miss Winthrop rose. Once outside, she could breathe freely. She said:-- "Her--her name is Frances?" "Frances Stuyvesant," he nodded. "When do you expect her home?" "The first of September." "Then you'd better put in a bid to have your vacation the first two weeks in September," she advised. "Business will begin to pick up right after that, and Farnsworth will need you." CHAPTER XXIII LOOKING AHEAD It was now the first week in August. If she could sustain his interest in the project for three weeks and get him married in the fourth, then she could settle back into the routine of her life. It was the only possible way of straightening out the tangle. Once he was safely married, that was the end. Their relations would cease automatically. The conventions would attend to that. As a married man he, of course, could not lunch with her or spend Saturday afternoons in the park with her, or Sunday in the country with her, or mid-week evenings anywhere with her. He would be exiled from her life as effectively as if he himself should go to Europe. In fact, the separation would be even more effective, because there would not be any possible hope of his coming back. For her it would be almost as if he died. Back in her room that night, Miss Winthrop saw all these things quite clearly. And she saw that this was the only way. In no other way could she remain in the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves. If he did not marry in September,--she had applied that afternoon for her own vacation to parallel his,--then she must resign. Unmarried, he would be as irresponsible this coming winter as he was last, and if she remained would be thrown back upon her. She could not allow that--she could not endure it. She had lost so many things all at once. She did not realize until now how much dreaming she had done in these last few months. Dreams of which at the time she had scarcely been conscious returned to-night to mock her with startling vividness. It was not so much that she wished to be loved as that she wished to love. That was where she had deceived herself. Had Don made love to her, she would have recognized the situation and guarded herself. But this matter of loving him was an attack from a quarter she had not anticipated.