Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-02-06

Her-ner name is frances!
Frances Stuyvesant," he nodded.
when do you expect her homer"
@The first of September.
"Then you'd better put in bid to have
your vacation the first two weeks in Sep
tember,' she advised. Business will
begin to pick up right after that, and
Farnsworth will need you"
1t was now the first week in August.
If she could sustain his interest in the
project for three weeks and get him mar
ried in the fourth, then she could settle
back into the routine of her life. 1t was
the only possible way of Strengthening out
the tangle. Once he was safely married,
that was the end. Their relations would
cease automatically. The conventions
would attend to that. As married man
he, of course, could not lunch with her or
spend Saturday afternoons in the park
her, or mid-week evenings anywhere with
her. He would be exiled from her life as
effectively as if he himself should go to
Europe. In fact, the separation would be
even more effective, because there would
not be any possible hope of his coming
back. For her it would be almost as if
he died.
RACK in her room that night, Miss
Winthrop saw all these things quite
clearly. And she saw that this was the
only way. In no other way could she re-
main in the Office of Carter, Rand & Sea-
graves. If he did not marry in Septem-
ber,-she had applied that afternoon for
her own vacation to parallel his,-then
she must resign. Unmarried, he would be
as irresponsible this coming winter as he
was last, and if she remained would be
thrown back upon her. She could not al
low that-she could not endure it.
She had lost so many things all at once.
She did not realize until now how much
dreaming she had done in these last few
months. Dreams of which at the time
she had scarcely been conscious returned
tonight to mock her with startling vivid
ness. 1t was not so much that she wished
to be loved as that she wished to love-
That was where she had deceived herself
Had Don made love to her, she would have
recognized the situation and guarded her.
SELF But this matter of loving him was
an attack from quarter she had not an
ticipated.
In the next three weeks she left him
little chance to think of anything but of
his work and of Frances. She talked of
nothing else at lunch; she talked of moth
ing else on Saturday afternoons and on
Sundays and whenever they met on other
days. This had its effect. 1t accustomed
him to associate together the two chief
objectives in his life until in his thoughts
they became synonymous. For the first
time since their engagement, he began to
think of Frances as an essential feature of
his everyday affairs. He pictured her as
breakfasting with him, as going downtown
with him in the morning, as interested
with him in the routine of his work; he
pictured her sometimes as lunching with
him-sometimes as lunching with him
and Sally Winthrop. He wrote her long
letter now every night, and found himself
speaking to her Familiarity of Farnsworth
and Blake and Seagraves as if she knew
them. 1t was surprising how much more
he found to write about than before.
Thinking of her in it, the house itself
seemed to change. This had always been
his fathers hOIISe. now If haca mo b;c