“I shouldn’t be precipitate, Paul,” Dick advised. “You know I don’t care a hang for morality except when it is useful. And in this case it is exceedingly useful. There may be children.—Please, please,” he hushed her. “And in such case even old scandal is not exactly good for them. Desertion takes too long. I’ll arrange to give you the real statutory grounds, which will save a year in the divorce.”
“If I so make up my mind,” she smiled wanly.
He nodded.
“But I may not make up my mind that way. I don’t know it myself. Perhaps it’s all a dream, and soon I shall wake up, and Oh Dear will come in and tell me how soundly and long I have slept.”
She turned away reluctantly, and paused suddenly when she had made half a dozen steps.
“Dick,” she called. “You have told me your heart, but not what’s in your mind. Don’t do anything foolish. Remember Denny Holbrook—no hunting accident, mind.”
He shook his head, and twinkled his eyes in feigned amusement, and marveled to himself that her intuition should have so squarely hit the mark.
“And leave all this?” he lied, with a gesture that embraced the ranch and all its projects. “And that book on in-and-in-breeding? And my first annual home sale of stock just ripe to come off?”
“It would be preposterous,” she agreed with brightening face. “But, Dick, in this difficulty of making up my mind, please, please know that—” She paused for the phrase, then made a gesture in mimicry of his, that included the Big House and its treasures, and said, “All this does not influence me a particle. Truly not.”
“As if I did not know it,” he assured her. “Of all unmercenary women— "