"Young things are young things." Madame Delano looked at Helene, who had

turned very white and had lowered her own lids to hide the consternation

in her eyes. But as her mother ceased speaking she raised them in swift

appeal to Ruyler.

"Maman says I coquette too much," she said plaintively, and Price

wondered if a slight movement under the hem of Madame Delano's long

skirts meant that the toe of a little gray shoe were boring into one of

the massive plinths of his mother-in-law. "But tell him, maman, that you

don't really mean it. I can't have Price jealous. That would be too

humiliating. I'm afraid I do flirt as naturally as I breathe, but Price

knows I haven't a thought for a man on earth but him." The color had

crept back into her cheeks, but there was still anxiety in her soft black

eyes, and Price was sure that the little pointed toe once more made its

peremptory appeal.

Madame Delano looked squarely at her son-in-law.

"That's all right--so far," she said grimly. "Helene is devoted to

you. But so have many other young wives been to busy American husbands.

Now, take my advice, and give her more of your companionship before it

is too late. Watch over her. There always comes a time--a

turning-point--European husbands understand, but American husbands are

fools. Woman's loyalty, fed on hope only, turns to resentment; and then

her separate life begins. Now, I've warned you. Go back to your office,

where, no doubt, your clerks are hanging out of the windows, wondering if

you are dead and the business wrecked. I want to talk to Helene."

III

In spite of his wise old French mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt

lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than

he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly

understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past,

and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the

result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman

who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it

alarming, and--unwelcome, but inevitable thought--peculiarly dangerous to

a young and beautiful creature with wild and lawless blood in her veins.

However, it was patent that so far her apprehensions were merely the

result of a rare imaginative flight, the result, no doubt, of her own

threatened exposure. Once more he admired her courage in returning to San

Francisco, and as he recalled the covert air of cynical triumph, with

which she had accepted his offer for her daughter's hand, he made no

doubt that one object had been to play a sardonic joke on the city she

must hate.




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