He
stared in amazement. When he heard the distant sound
of the turning key he dropped to a chair again and
laughed. Certainly women were queer creatures--
always doing what one didn't expect. Still, in the end--
well, a sensible woman knew a good chance to marry
and took it. There was no doubt a good deal of
pretense in Mildred's delicacy as to money matters--but
a devilish creditable sort of pretense. He liked the
ladylike, ``nice'' pretenses, of women of the right sort
--liked them when they fooled him, liked them when
they only half fooled him.
Presently he knocked on the door of the little library,
opened it when permission came in Cyrilla's voice. She
was reading the evening paper--he did not see the
glasses she hastily thrust into a drawer. In that soft
light she looked a scant thirty, handsome, but for his
taste too intellectual of type to be attractive--except
as a friend.
``Well,'' said he, as he lit a cigarette and dropped the
match into the big copper ash-bowl, ``I'll bet you can't
guess what I've been up to.
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