are always honest with me. You can murder people, if you like, and
burn down as many houses as you choose. You probably will. But you'll
be honest with me--won't you?--and particularly when you don't want to
be?"

So I promised her that. And sometimes I believe it is the only promise
which I ever tried to keep quite faithfully....


4

And all the ensuing summer I followed Stella Musgrave from one
watering place to another, with an engaging and entire candor as to my
desires. I was upon the verge of my majority, when, under the terms of
my father's will, I would come into possession of such fragments of
his patrimony as he had omitted to squander. And afterward I intended
to become excessively distinguished in this or that profession, not as
yet irrevocably fixed upon, but for choice as a writer of immortal
verse; and I was used to dwell at this time very feelingly, and very
frequently, upon the wholesome restraint which matrimony imposes upon
the possessor of an artistic temperament.

Stella promised to place my name upon her waiting list, and to take up
the matter in due season; and she lamented, with a tiny and
pre-meditated yawn, that as a servitor of system she was compelled to
list her "little lovers and suitors in alphabetical order, Mr.
Townsend. Besides, you would probably strangle me before the year was
out."

"I would thoroughly enjoy doing it," I said, grimly, "right now." She