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Page 61
"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'h�te_ restaurants in the neighborhood. He
regretted not having thought of this sooner, for he did not care to
dine at a _table d'h�te_ 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?"
"If that is true," replied the Picture, or replied Stuart, rather, for
the Picture, "I cannot be a very attractive chaperon." Stuart bowed
politely at this, and then considered the point it had raised as to
whether he had, in assuming both characters, the right to pay himself
compliments. He decided against himself in this particular instance,
but agreed that he was not responsible for anything the Picture might
say, so long as he sincerely and fairly tried to make it answer him as
he thought the original would do under like circumstances. From what
he knew of the original under other conditions, he decided that he
could give a very close imitation of her point of view.
Stuart's interest in his dinner was so real that he found himself
neglecting his wife, and he had to pull himself up to his duty with a
sharp reproof. After smiling back at her for a moment or two until his
servant had again left them alone, he asked her to tell him what she
had been doing during the day.
"Oh, nothing very important," said the Picture. "I went shopping in
the morning and--"
Stuart stopped himself and considered this last remark doubtfully.
"Now, how do I know she would go shopping?" he asked himself. "People
from Harlem and women who like bargain-counters, and who eat chocolate
meringue for lunch, and then stop in at a continuous performance, go
shopping. It must be the comic-paper sort of wives who go about
matching shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, I must have made Miss
Delamar's understudy misrepresent her. I beg your pardon, my dear," he
said aloud to the Picture. "You did _not_ go shopping this
morning. You probably went to a woman's luncheon somewhere. Tell me
about that."
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