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RV 198 Healer and renewed optimism? If only a woman could guess what inclined a man's heart to her, what withdrew it! Pauline, if she had had the standardizing of life, would have begun with human hearts, and had them turned out in series, all alike, rather than let them come into being haphazard, cranky amateurish things that you couldn't count on, or start up again if anything went wrong

Just a touch of rouge? Well, perhaps her maid was right. She did look rather pale and drawn. Mrs. Herman Toy put it on with a trowel apparently that was what men liked Pauline shed a faint bloom on her checks and ran her clever fingers through her prettily waved hair, wondering again, as she did so, if it wouldn't be better to bob it. Then the mauve tea-gown, the Chinese amethysts, and those silver sandals that made her feet so slender. She looked at herself with a sigh of pleasure. Dinner was to be served in the boudoir.

Manford was very late; it was ten o'clock before coffee and liqueurs were put on the low stand by the fire, and the little dinner-table was noiselessly removed. The fire glowed invitingly, and he sank into the armchair his wife pushed forward with a sound like a murmur of content.

"Such a day—" he said, passing his hand across his forehead as if to brush away a tangle of legal problems.

"You do too much, Dexter; you really do. I know how wonderfully young you are for your age,