told me the sort of tan she'd like to get in the summer and how closely
she usually approximated it."

"You sat enraptured by her low alto?"

"By her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to
think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years
ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze,
if I remember rightly."

Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.

"She's got you going--oh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The
human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his
luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in
his family!"

Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.

"Snowing hard."

Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.

"Another winter." Maury's voice from the window was almost a whisper.
"We're growing old, Anthony. I'm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to
thirty, and then I'm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man."

Anthony was silent for a moment.

"You _are_ old, Maury," he agreed at length. "The first signs of a very