She listened to this account of the matter as she might have gazed, from afar, at some queer object that was scarce distinguishable. It left her a moment in the deepest thought, but she presently recovered her tone. "Let me then congratulate you on at last knowing what you want!"
But there were, after all, he instantly showed, no such great reasons for that. "I only know it so far as you know it! I struck while the iron was hot—or at any rate while the hammer was."
"Of course I recognise"—she adopted his image with her restored gaiety—"that it can rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I blazed up, and I know that when I burn———"
She had pulled up with the foolish sense of this. "When you burn?"
"Well, I do it as Chicago does."
He also could laugh out now. "Isn't that usually down to the ground?"
Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light arms. "As high as the sky!" Then she came back, as with a scruple, to the real question. "I suppose you've still formalities to go through."
"With Mr. Prodmore?" Well, he would sup-
