ONLY A WALTZ


"Aunt, dear aunt, don't believe a word of what he is going to tell you.
He is preparing to fib, to fib outrageously. If I hadn't interrupted him
at the beginning of his talk, he would have told you that he had made up
his mind to marry me from his and my earliest childhood."

"Of course!" exclaimed Gontran.

"Of course not," replied Marceline. "He was going to tell you that he
was a good little boy, having always loved his little cousin, and that
our marriage was a delightful romance of tenderness and sweetness."

"Why, yes, of course," repeated Gontran.

"Nonsense! The truth, Aunt Louise, the real truth, in short, is this,
never, never should we have been married if on the 17th of May, 1890,
between nine and eleven o'clock, he had not lost 34,000 points at
bezique at the club, and if all the boxes had not been sold, that same
night, at the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre."

Gontran began to laugh.

"Oh, you can laugh as much as you please! You know very well that but
for this--on what does fate depend?--I should now be married and a