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estate is yours. Now, for the conditions. The first is this: that you agree to live with the other heiress—we’re sure now, from the evidence available, that there are only two of you—in your uncle’s Tarrytown mansion on the Hudson. The house will be maintained by the estate for one year. You must live there exclusively for that year; after that you’re free to live anywhere you like.”
    â€œWow,” said Kerrie. “I was really worried. Why, that’s not a condition—it’s a blessing! Beautiful house, cars, all the clothes in the world, a maid to do my hair, three squares a day and a couple of cooks to prepare them … Mister, that’s heaven. Bring on your other condition!”
    Beau fished a paper out of his pocket. “Let me read you,” he said slowly, “a copy of a paragraph from your uncle’s will.” He read:
    â€œIn imposing this second condition upon my heirs, I feel it necessary to warn them against that insidious, degrading, and fatal institution in human relations known as marriage. I was married, and I know. At its best, it is a dull, confining prison. At its worst, it is hell. Since my divorce, I have lived, and I shall die, a bachelor. My only friend, Edmund De Carlos, to whom I have in this testament willed one million dollars and a home for life if he so wishes, is now and has always been a bachelor. We have discussed the subject many times and agree that most of the ills of the world can be traced to marriage, or rather to its effect upon individuals. It has caused men and women to become greedy, it has inspired horrible crimes, it has, historically, bred wars and international treacheries. I am an old man; my heirs, if they still live, will be young. I feel I must impose my experience of life upon them. They are free to reject my advice, of course, but only at the expense of the worldly goods I am in a position to bestow upon them.…”
    Beau put the paper back in his pocket. “There’s more of the same. But I think you get the idea.”
    Kerrie looked astonished. “He was mad!”
    â€œNo,” said Beau dryly, “he was perfectly sane—in the legal sense, and we have reason to believe in the medical, too. He was just abnormally bitter and intense on this one subject. I suppose it all dates from the dirty deal his wife gave him ’way back in 1902 or so. Anyway, he felt so strongly about marriage that upon it depends your inheritance.”
    â€œI don’t quite—”
    â€œThe will stipulates that the income payable to any heir shall cease automatically, and that heir from then on forfeits all claim to her share of the estate, if and when she marries.”
    â€œYou mean,” cried Kerrie, “if I accept this legacy I shan’t ever be able to get married?”
    â€œNot if you want to keep pocketing twenty-five hundred a week.”
    â€œAnd if I turn the whole thing down now, or accept and then marry?”
    â€œYour cousin Margo, if she’s eligible, would become the sole heiress. Your share would go to her. Or if you both became ineligible, the will provides that the income from the estate be donated by the trustees to such organized charities as they may see fit to select, and they continue to be trustees for the estate. Or if the heirs remain eligible, then at the death of one the income goes to the survivor. At the death of the survivor, the income goes to the charities. You see, your uncle Cadmus considered death and marriage practically the same thing.”
    Kerrie was silent for a long time. The orchestra was playing, and people were dancing under colored lights; her face lay in trombone shadows.
    Beau waited for her decision with a curious eagerness. She couldn’t turn it down. She wouldn’t be human if she did. She was human, all right—he could testify to that, because he had held her in his arms when they danced.
    Cole’s conditions might