"What'll I do, Kess? What'll I do?"

"I tell you that you can't get away with it, girl. The old man's getting
childish; they'll have to have him restrained. Why, the woman he was
married to for twenty years, Lenie Goldstone, never even seen a
skirt-dance. I remember once he brought her to New York and then
wouldn't let her see a cabaret show. He won't even buy sleeveless models
for his French room."

"I tell you, Kess, he'll take me to Jersey to-morrow and marry me, if I
give the word."

"Not a chance!"

"I tell you yes. That's why I got to see you. I got to tell him
to-night, Kess. He--goes back to-morrow."

He regarded her slowly, watching her throat where it throbbed.

"Well, what are you going to do?"

"I--I don't know."

"Where do you stand with him? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?"

"He--he don't ask questions, Kess. I--I'm his ideal, he says, of
the--kind of--woman can take up for him where his wife left off. He says
we're alike in everything but looks, and that a man who was happy in
marriage like him can't be happy outside of it. He--he's sized up pretty