The Lion's Mouse

								

keeping, he got a taxi and took the girl to a dull but good place, sure
to be practically empty at that hour. They sat down at a table in a
corner, and Sands ordered an oyster stew.
"Do you dislike me?" he began his catechism. "Could you like me enough
to think of me as a husband, if we'd met in a conventional, society sort
of way?"
"Yes, I could. I do want you to know that. You've been so splendid to
me."
"So far so good, but I haven't been splendid. I've fallen in love with
you. I haven't been in love before ... that is, not since I was twenty.
I've never had time...."
"You haven't taken much time in doing it now!" She gave a queer little
laugh with a sob in it.
"I've learned the lesson that time isn't the thing needed. I want you
more than I ever wanted anything in my life, and I'll take you ... as
you stand."
"You haven't stopped to think ... to count the cost," she said. "Imagine
what it would be for a man like you to have a wife he knew nothing
about, just a single figure cut off its background, in a picture he'd
never seen. People would ask: 'Who was she?' and there'd be no answer."
"They'd not ask me that," said Roger obstinately. "And I wouldn't care
what they asked each other. I'm not a society man, though I might enjoy
putting my wife on the top floor. And I can do that with you if I
choose! You say I'm a man of importance. I'm important enough anyhow to
take the wife I want, and to put her where I want her to be."
"Yes, perhaps. But it wouldn't be only for a little while that I'd not
be allowed to tell you about myself. It would be for always. You
couldn't love me enough to be happy in spite of that."
"I could be happy," Roger insisted, "if you'd love me."
"I'd adore you! But...."
"Then there isn't any 'but'. I don't say I shouldn't like to know all
about my wife and her people and her past. Still, I'd rather have you
with a future and no past than any other woman with both. I can't do
without you, and I'm going to have you ... now, to-day, as soon as I can
buy a license and get a parson to make us man and wife."
"But if you should regret it?"
"I never will be sorry, if you'll do what you just said, adore
me ... half as much as I'll adore you."
Her eyes gave him a beautiful answer. Roger Sands felt that nothing
could make him regret the coming of such a romance into his hustling
life.
This, then, was the story behind the sensation when Roger Sands came
back from a short trip to California bringing a wife, a girl who had
been a Miss Beverley White, a girl nobody had ever seen or heard of
before.

III
THE MOUSE

On the same September day, in Moreton and Payntor's department store in
New York, might have been seen a wisp of a girl "cheeking" a manager
into giving her a situation on the strength of her being Irish.
By chance, the side door of the big Sixth Avenue shop opened for Clo
Riley (her true, Irish, baptismal name was Clodagh, but she didn't think