Bel lamy," she said In a voice which could not conceal a tremor, " why you do not have a home of your own." " I have a—a sort of home," said Mr. Bellamy. " Yes—yes—but you know what I mean," said Mary ; " I mean a real home. I think, as a man grows older, he must feel the need of a—well—of somebody to—l mean—why don't you marry, Mr. Bellamy ?" Mary lay back quietly in her chair ; but her heart was beating wildly. Mr. Bellamy, on the contrary, seemed calm. He knocked the ashes from the end of his cigarette, and contemplated the burning end for a moment. Mary watched him eagerly. She felt she would willingly give ten years of her life to be over the next ten minutes— safely. "There are reasons, cogent reasons," said Mr. Bellamy after a slight pause, " why I should not ask a woman to marry me." "•But," said Mary with a slightly nervous laugh, " you surely do not for get it is leap year, and a woman may ask you to be her husband ?" Edward Bellamy turned his cigarette in his mouth and crossed his legs- " I have been through—let me see—six leap years since T was of marriageable age," he said, " and no woman has proposed to me. And 1 am certainly not so at tractive now as I was ten or twenty years ago." " But why should you not ask a woman to marry you, Mr. Bellamy ?" Mary leaned slightly forward. " You are still a comparatively young man ; and there is—'there is more than one woman who would be proud to be your Wife." Mary Harrison grew more and more nervous as she came nearer to her de claration. Edward Bellamy threw the end of his cigarette info the fire, and looked across straight into Mary's eyes as she sat watching him. "1 will tell you the honest truth, Mary," he said. It was the first time in these years of friend ship that he had called her by her Christian name, and she started at the sound of it. " I ought to be fairly well off by this time," continued Edward Bellamy. "And I should be had I only myself to think of. But I have more than myself to think of. 