always sitting--her mountain of soft flesh seemed to be slowly
collapsing upon and around the chair like a lump of dough on a
mold. Her only interest in life was disclosed when she was
settled and settling at the luncheon table. She used her knife
more than her fork and her fingers more than either. Feuerstein
left soon after luncheon, lingering only long enough to give Lena
a theatrical embrace. ``Well, I'll not spend much time with
those women, once I'm married,'' he reflected as he went down the
steps; and he thought of Hilda and sighed.


The next day but one he met Lena in the edge of the park and,
after gloomy silence, shot with strange piercing looks that made
her feel as if she were the heroine of a book, he burst forth
with a demand for immediate marriage.

``Forty-eight hours of torment!'' he cried. ``I shall not leave
you again until you are securely mine.''

He proceeded to drop vague, adroit hints of the perils that beset
a fascinating actor's life, of the women that had come and gone
in his life. And Lena, all a-tremble with jealous anxiety, was
in the parlor of a Lutheran parsonage, with the minister reading
out of the black book, before she was quite aware that she and
her cyclonic adorer were not still promenading near the
green-house in the park. ``Now,'' said Feuerstein briskly, as
they were once more in the open air, ``we'll go to your father.''

``Goodness gracious, no,'' protested Lena. ``You don't know
him--he'll be crazy --just crazy! We must wait till he finds out