There was an embarrassing pause, during which Van Bibber scowled at himself in the mirror opposite as though to ask it what a man who looked like that should do under such trying circumstances.

He turned at last and stared at Travers. “’Where ignorance is bliss, it’s folly to be wise,’” he whispered, keeping his face toward his friend.  “What do you say?  Personally I don’t see myself in the part of Providence.  It’s the case of the poor man and his one ewe lamb, isn’t it?”

“We don’t want his ewe lamb, do we?” growled Travers.  “It’s a case of the dog in a manger, I say.  I thought we were going to be fairy godfathers to ‘La Cinderella.’”

“The lady seems to be supplied with a most determined godfather as it is,” returned Van Bibber.

The elevator boy raised his face and stared at them with haggard eyes.

“Well?” he begged.

Van Bibber smiled upon him reassuringly, with a look partly of respect and partly of pity.

“You can drop us to the street,” he said.

MISS DELAMAR’S UNDERSTUDY

A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman.  He marries her because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that every other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or because she is in love with him.  If this latter is the case, she gives certain values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other woman gives, and so he observes to himself, “This is the woman who best understands me.”

You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but as men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated.  Women still marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time the woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not content without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other reason than because he cares for her.  For if a dog, even, runs up to you wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you pat him on the head and say, “What a nice dog.”  You like him because he likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and could take blue ribbons at bench shows.

This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other things.  When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given time enough in which to demonstrate the fact.  He never considered that, were he married to her, he could not take up his hat and go away when she became uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not brilliant, could not be smiled away either.  They would rise up and greet him every morning, and would be the last thing he would hear at night.