In a few moments she had him going. The manliness that had possessed him departed. He bowed low, and said something about “irresistible impulse” and “for ever carry in his heart the memory of”—and she suggested that he catch the first fire-escape going down.

“I will away,” said John Delaney, “to the further-most parts of the earth. I cannot remain near you and know that you are another’s. I will to Africa, and there amid other scenes strive to for—”

“For goodness’ sake, get out,” said Helen.

“Somebody might come in.”

He knelt upon one knee, and she extended him one white hand that he might give it a farewell kiss.

Girls, was this choice boon of the great little god Cupid ever vouchsafed you—to have the fellow you want hard and fast, and have the one you don’t want come with a damp curl on his forehead, and kneel to you and babble of Africa and love which, in spite of everything, shall for ever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to feel the sweet security of your own happy state; to send the unlucky one, broken-hearted, to foreign climes, while you congratulate yourself, as he presses his last kiss upon your knuckles, that your nails are well manicured—say, girls, it’s galluptious—don’t ever let it get by you.

And then, of course—how did you guess it?—the door opened and in stalked the bridegroom, jealous of slow-tying bonnet-strings.

The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen’s hand, and out of the window and down the fire-escape sprang John Delaney, Africa-bound.

A little slow music, if you please—faint violin, just a breath in the clarinet and a touch of the ’cello. Imagine the scene. Frank, white-hot, with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from him. Helen, rushing and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears them from his shoulders—once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and that—the stage manager will show you how—and throws her from him to the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing. Never, he cries, will he look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring groups of astonished guests.

And, now,because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience must stroll out into the real lobby of the world and marry, die, grow grey, rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of twenty years which must precede the rising of the curtain again.

Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house. At thirty-eight she could have bested many an eighteen- year-old at a beauty show on points and general results. Only a few people remembered her wedding comedy, but she made of it no secret. She did not pack it in lavender or moth-balls, nor did she sell it to a magazine.

One day a middle-aged, money-making lawyer, who bought his legal cap and ink of her, asked her across the counter to marry him.

“I’m really much obliged to you,” said Helen cheerfully, “but I married another man twenty years ago. He was more a goose than a man, but I think I love him yet. I have never seen him since about half an hour after the ceremony. Was it copying ink that you wanted or just writing fluid?”

The lawyer bowed over the counter with old-time grace and left a respectful kiss on the back of her hand. Helen sighed. Parting salutes, however romantic, may be overdone. Here she was at thirty-eight, beautiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have got from her lovers were reproaches and adieus. Worse still, in the last one she had lost a customer, too.