His mind continued on the picture while he was dressing, and he was so absorbed in it and in analyzing the effect it had had upon him, that his servant spoke twice before he heard him.

“No,” he answered, “I shall not dine here to-night.”  Dining at home was with him a very simple affair, and a somewhat lonely one, and he avoided it almost nightly by indulging himself in a more expensive fashion.

But even as he spoke an idea came to Stuart which made him reconsider his determination, and which struck him as so amusing, that he stopped pulling at his tie and smiled delightedly at himself in the glass before him.

“Yes,” he said, still smiling, “I will dine here to-night.  Get me anything in a hurry.  You need not wait now; go get the dinner up as soon as possible.”

The effect which the photograph of Miss Delamar had upon him, and the transformation it had accomplished in his room, had been as great as would have marked the presence there of the girl herself.  While considering this it had come to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration, that here was a way by which he could test the responsibilities and conditions of married life without compromising either himself or the girl to whom he would suppose himself to be married.

“I will put that picture at the head of the table,” he said, “and I will play that it is she herself, her own beautiful, lovely self, and I will talk to her and exchange views with her, and make her answer me just as she would were we actually married and settled.”  He looked at his watch and found it was just seven o’clock.  “I will begin now,” he said, “and I will keep up the delusion until midnight.  To-night is the best time to try the experiment, because the picture is new now, and its influence will be all the more real.  In a few weeks it may have lost some of its freshness and reality and will have become one of the fixtures in the room.”

Stuart decided that under these new conditions it would be more pleasant to dine at Delmonico’s, and he was on the point of asking the Picture what she thought of it, when he remembered that while it had been possible for him to make a practise of dining at that place as a bachelor, he could not now afford so expensive a luxury, and he decided that he had better economize in that particular and go instead to one of the table d’hote restaurants in the neighborhood.  He regretted not having thought of this sooner, for he did not care to dine at a table d’hote in evening dress, as in some places it rendered him conspicuous.  So, sooner than have this happen he decided to dine at home, as he had originally intended when he first thought of attempting this experiment, and then conducted the Picture in to dinner and placed her in an armchair facing him, with the candles full upon the face.

“Now this is something like,” he exclaimed, joyously.  “I can’t imagine anything better than this.  Here we are all to ourselves with no one to bother us, with no chaperon, or chaperon’s husband either, which is generally worse.  Why is it, my dear,” he asked, gayly, in a tone he considered affectionate and husbandly, “that the attractive chaperons are always handicapped by such stupid husbands, and vice versa?”