what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course,
to get away from a life like this." He summed up in a disparaging
glance the background of indigent furniture. "The question is how
you'll like coming back to it."

She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. "I
only know I don't like leaving it."

He flung back sombrely, "You don't even put it conditionally
then?"

Her gaze deepened. "On what?"

He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and
paused before her. "On the alternative of marrying me."

The slow color--even her blushes seemed deliberate--rose to her
lower lids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves
into a smile and she waited.

He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose
nervous exasperation escapes through his muscles.

"And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!"

Her eyes triumphed for him. "In less!"

"The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be
then? It's slaving one's life away for a stranger!" He took her
hands abruptly. "You'll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo?