He stood there surveying her.  “It wouldn’t do at all for you to marry Prescott, Katie.  He’s a likeable enough fellow, but with it all something of a duffer.”

“Just what kind of man,” asked Katie demurely, “would you say I had better marry?”

He sat down in a chair nearer her.  “Just what kind of man would you like to marry?”

“How do you know,” she asked, still demurely, “that I would like to marry any?”

“Oh you must have a guide, Katie.  You must be guided through this wicked world.”

She bit her lip and turned away when he told her she must have a guide.

But she turned back, and seriously.  “Is it a wicked world?”

With that he ventured to pat the hand now lying on the arm of the chair so near him.  “Well you’ll never know it, if it is.  We’ll keep it all from you, Katie.  You’re safe.”

Katie pulled her hand away petulantly.  “If there’s anything I don’t want to be,” she said, “it’s safe.”

That seemed to amuse him.  “I only meant,” he laughed, “safe from the great outer world.”

“Tell me,” said Katie, “what’s in the great outer world?”

He sat there smiling at her as one would smile at a dear inquisitive child.

“Have you made many excursions into the great outer world?” she asked boldly.

“Oh yes,” he replied lightly, “I’ve been something of an explorer.  All men, you know, Katie, are born explorers.  Though for the most part I must say I find our own little world the more attractive.”

Then he surprised her.  “Katie, would you think a man a brute to propose to a girl on the day she was giving an important dinner?”

But right there she pulled herself in.  “No more tumbles!” thought Katie.

“It would seem rather inconsiderate, wouldn’t it?  Such a man wouldn’t seem to have a true sense of values.”

“Well, dinner or no dinner, the man I have in mind has a true sense of values.  He has a true sense of values because he knows Katherine Wayneworth Jones for the most desirable thing in all the world.”

It did surprise her, and the surprise grew.  None of them had thought of Major Darrett as what they called a marrying man.

And on the heels of the surprise came a certain sense of triumph.  Katie knew that any of the girls in what he called their little world would be looking upon it as a moment of triumph, and there was triumph in gaining what others would regard as triumph.

“How old are you, Katie?” he asked.

She told him.

“Twenty-five.  And I’m forty-one.  Is that prohibitive?”

She looked at him, thinking how lightly the years had touched him—­how lightly, in all probability, they would touch him.  He had distinctly the military bearing.  He would have that same bearing at sixty.  And that same charm.  He was one to whom experience gave the gift of charm more insidiously than youth could give it.