The Smart Set/Volume 13/Issue 3/A Sense of Humor

by Cosmo Hamilton

 

A SENSE OF HUMOR

By Cosmo Hamilton

“Another cup of coffee, please,” said Billy Hutton, in his most cheerful voice, “and one lump of ——”

The beautiful Mrs. Archibald Hay raised a long, white, pointed finger. “Hush!” she said; “I possess a memory.”

Hutton's voice became almost tender, and he gave his host's wife a look in which there was very genuine admiration.

“You're an emporium of everything that's excellent. Shall I give you a kidney?”

Mrs. Hay made a long arm, and put a brimming cup of coffee near Hutton's elbow.

“Obviously,” she said, “your memory is a very flabby thing! I never take kidneys. Now, even from a fortnight spent under the same roof, I know that you hate tea for breakfast——”

“Wonderful!”

“—that you never indulge in more than one lump of sugar——”

“Marvelous!”

“—being in a constant state of fear of encroaching flesh——”

“Too true!” cried Hutton, with a laugh which made the rafters ring.

“—that you must have a whiskey-and-soda at eleven, in order to look optimistically upon the world——”

“Right again!”

“—and that it is quite impossible for you to retire for the night without a mild cigar in a scorching bath.”

Hutton was in the act of passing the toast-rack. His arm became arrested in mid-air, and his thick, dark eyebrows rose high. “How the dickens do you know that?” he asked, profoundly astonished.

Before Mrs. Hay replied, she picked up several crumbs, and dropped them carefully into her plate. “I have seen little mountains of your ash,” she said, with a very pleasant touch of reproof in her voice, “making a pattern on the bath-mat.”

“By Jove! I'm sorry. Toast?'

“I always eat bread, Billy dear.”

Hutton dropped the toast-rack, and pounced on a roll. “Of course you do. I hadn't forgotten.”

Mrs. Hay laughed. It was the nearest thing to the song of a thrush which Hutton had ever heard. “What ingenious word do you call it by, then?”

“I only just didn't happen to remember, that's all.”

And then they both laughed—Mrs. Hay, because she was amused at the man's bad logic, and Hutton, because he was amused at her amusement, and because her laugh was infectious.

He got up, crossed the room, and lowered the blind over one of the diamond-paned windows through which a shaft of sun had found its way and, having discovered Mrs. Hay, had been only too content to nestle into her hair. Absurd as it may seem, there was something of jealousy in Hutton's action.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Hay.

“You're a delicious thing,” said Hutton, leaning over her chair.

With a little laugh, she raised her hand as a barrier, and in this way proved herself to be, if any proof were needed, an honor to her sex. “Too early, Billy,” she said.

“Oh, bother! As if it's ever too early. Please!”

The barrier was still there, but the laugh still played at the corners of her mouth. “Kisses and breakfast don't go well together.”

Hutton's astonishment found vent in a kind of gasp. He backed away from her, and stood staring.

“I don't believe you mean that,” he said. “I don't believe it's possible for you to mean that.”

Mrs. Hay held her head sideways, and looked at him out of the corners of her very beautiful eyes. “Oh, but I do,” she replied.

“Then your knowledge of breakfasts is, if you will forgive my saying so, deplorably out of date. I think it's only charitable on my part to prove how well they go together.”

“'Hutton on Breakfasts,'” she laughed. “You must present me with a copy.”

Her husband's old friend stood by her chair again. “I'll give you the whole edition for a single kiss.”

“Ought they to be fried on toast, or deviled?”

Hutton put his hands into the pockets of his duck coat. A slightly sulky line was perceptible under his carefully curled mustache. “You're awfully wordy, this morning,” he said.

Mrs. Hay pushed her chair away from the table, and rose to her feet. Hutton was a tall man, as men go, but Mrs. Hay, as she stood in front of him, appeared to be but a shade of an inch shorter. She ran her finger lightly from one to another brass button on his coat, and spoke slowly, with an effortless, musical drawl.

“My dear, impetuous Billy, a backwater is one thing, but a breakfast-room is quite another. I am no prude. At the same time, I have a great respect for the feelings of my servants. You see, they know that you are my husband's best friend, and, although they might overlook a quiet, moonlight kiss, I'm certain they'd put the worst interpretation on an early-morning one.”

The sulky line around Hutton's mouth developed. “You're precious cautious about nothing, all of a sudden. What on earth is the world coming to, if a man can't be—chummy with his friend's wife?'

Mrs. Hay put her hands behind her, lifted her rounded chin, and looked at Billy under her eyelashes. “What would you say, my friend, if you caught my husband kissing your wife?”

“I never should.”

“Why?”

“It's impossible.”

“Why?”

“Well, simply because my wife is not that type of woman.”

“What!” cried Mrs. Hay, with a sudden angry spot on each cheek.

Hutton added, with precipitation, “I mean to say, she doesn't kiss. It doesn't appeal to her.”

“How do you know,” she returned, still angry, “that it appeals to me?”

Hutton then showed that the diplomatic service had lost a shining light. “It's only too obvious that it doesn't,” he said, calmly.

Mrs. Hay's anger died a sudden death. Her face dimpled, and she held it slightly up. “Is it?” she asked.

“By George, it isn't!” And he kissed her suddenly.

II

Whereupon, Viola Hay turned swiftly on her heel, and made her way to the veranda.

The doorway improvised a frame for her. Her beautiful figure, in its close-fitting white frock, was picked out like a silver point against the flaming border of flowers that ran around the bungalow. Beyond this rainbow, the lawn, cut close, stretched on a slight incline down to the bank of the Thames. The river, wide and dignified at this point, looked like a broad band of silver. On the other bank, in thick clumps, stood old trees, their twisted limbs shaded from the sun by their leaves, among which birds built their nests, launched their families into the world, and died. Beyond these, a series of meadows stretched, cut into uneven shapes by thick hedges which flung their shadows across the grass. Over everything the sun spread his smile, and in the air danced myriads of shimmering specks, and the throbbing voices of larks filled the world with music.

For some minutes, Hutton stood watching Mrs. Hay. Something of the beauty of the scene seemed to have got into his blood. When he spoke, it was in a low voice, such as one uses in a cathedral.

“Let's go before the others come down,” he said.

Mrs. Hay turned to him with a smile. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was not unnatural that she took his lowered voice as a compliment to herself.

“My dear boy, please don't be so energetic. Do you know, for a change, I really think I shall wait and give poor Archie his coffee?”

“Dash it!” cried Hutton, “what have I got up for, then?”

“The pleasure of a tête-à-tête breakfast.”

“The pleasure of having you to myself the entire morning, you mean. Do come, Vi. Oh, hang it, do come! You're so heavenly to look at that I shall crush the life out of you in a minute! And those blessed servants will be dodging in directly.”

“And find me lifeless on the mat,” laughed Viola, touching her hair expertly with her hand, “to say nothing of Peg. Poor Peg! I wonder if she cares the least bit for you, Billy.”

“Cares for me!” echoed Hutton. “Of course she does. But she's all right. She's a good pal, and she lets me do as I like. She's a sensible little woman.”

“Is she? I wonder. I think she rather underrates the attractions of other women.”

Hutton tapped a cigarette impatiently on its case. “Oh, well, she never had any cause for complaint since she married me. I've flirted every now and then; but, hang it, she knows there has never been any danger in it.”

A rather peculiar smile played round the lips of Mrs. Hay.

“Never any danger? And now, Billy, can you grow fond of me, do you think, without any danger?”

Hutton seized her hand, and carried it to his lips. His dark eyes blazed.

“Danger be hanged!” he said; “you're divine!”

Drawing her hand away, with a little, rippling laugh, Mrs. Hay crossed the room and rang the bell.

“My sunshade, please. You shall punt me up the backwater if you think you would care to do so.”

She picked up a large garden hat, a poppy-laden thing, and fastened it on her head.

“What a scrumptious hat!” said Hutton, collecting the sunshade and an armful of cushions. “By George! you're the best-dressed woman I've ever seen. How do you do it?”

“Rather a strong artistic tendency, assisted by a good credit balance.”

A servant entered.

“Bring the second breakfast, and let Major Hay and Mrs. Hutton know when it's ready.”

Before the servant had left the room, Viola was on the veranda. Hutton joined her eagerly, and together they made their way to the lawn.

“Now, Billy,” she said, “do learn to hold a sunshade in the direction of the sun.”

“If I do that, I can't see your face.”

“Then you must wait till you're in the punt. I can't have my skin spoiled because you can't see my face. Really, Billy, what would Peg say, if she saw you looking at one like that?”

Hutton dropped a cushion, and kicked it hard. It lay, a soft, scarlet spot, on the green lawn ahead of them.

“I dunno, and I don't care! I can't think of anything but your beauty. I've forgotten everybody who was in my life a fortnight ago. I can't see or think further than you.”

Mrs. Hay conveyed a patronizing sense of pleasure by resting her hand lightly on Hutton's arm.

“Dear old Billy! What a romantic person, isn't he?”

“Do hurry,” said Hutton.

“My dear, I am hurrying.”

“You hurry so slowly.”

“That's philosophy.”

Hutton arrived at the cushion, and gave it another kick toward the boat-house.

“It may be philosophy, but it's dashed annoying,” he said.

III

Before Mrs. Hay's laugh had quite died away, Major Hay hurried into the room, gave a swift glance about, noticed with anger the remains of two breakfasts, and made his way quickly to the veranda. The only thing the pleasant landscape contained, so far as he was aware, were the figures of his wife and his best friend, the former moving with her own peculiar grace, the latter striding along by her side, holding a parasol over her, kicking a cushion along. Hay clenched his fists, and swore loudly.

“Hullo, hullo, hullo! That's pretty language for so early in the morning. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, to be cross on such a too utterly perfect day, Archie?”

Mrs. Billy Hutton stood in the middle of the room, looking as fresh and sweet as a primrose.

Hay turned to her with a forced smile, and took her outstretched hand with a cordial deference. “I'm not cross,” he said, “not I!”

“Oh!” she said, “what was the meaning, then, of that old-established little word?”

“Fact is, 1 was too late to catch Viola. For your sake, I assure you. So afraid you'll have too much of me.”

“That's not possible, dear man. You're so suitable to the temperature. You never make one feel too hot, and you never make one feel too cold.”

“Really!”

“And yet you're always doing something. Now, Viola looks so cool, so undisturbed, so pale in this heat, that she positively disconcerts me.”

Hay's eyes still followed the retreating figures, and his hands were still clenched. But he managed to fill his voice with a casual lightness which he thought would hide his feelings.

“How do you look when you're disconcerted?” he asked.

“My face gets sunburned, and my hair grows limp and uncurled.”

“Oh, no, never!”

Mrs. Billy followed the direction of Hay's eyes. She looked quickly from the two figures to her host. She noticed with a quick sympathy and understanding the anger and jealousy he he tried so politely to hide, and the clenched, nervous hands that betrayed the true state of his mind.

Hutton had arranged the cushions in the punt, and was handing Mrs. Hay into it tenderly. Hay stood watching everything with compressed lips, and his eyes screwed up. He didn't move or attempt to speak until the red sunshade turned into the bend of the river and was hidden by the bank.

In her turn, Mrs. Billy watched Hay. She saw the suppressed rage in his well-cut, soldierly face, and in the lines round his mouth, and she came to the conclusion that it would be necessary for her to use all the tact she possessed at all moments of the day, in order to prevent friction between these two men.

Opportunely, the servants came in and rearranged the table, and placed the fresh breakfast. The delightful aroma of hot coffee pervaded everything.

Mrs. Billy made a little dash at the table, and sat down.

“Breakfast!” she cried, with brisk cheerfulness. “Archie, not to put too fine a point on it, I starve, I literally starve!”

Hay gave a sigh, and shook himself. “That won't do at all,” he said, with a brave attempt to catch her tone. “Now, then, shall it be deviled bones?”

“Deviled bones—to a starving female?”

“Omelet, then?”

Mrs. Billy laid a dainty hand upon the coffee-urn.

“What kind of omelet?”

Hay bent over it. “The usual kind of omelet. Egg, more egg, and still more egg.”

Mrs. Billy laughed. It was a different kind of laugh from Mrs. Archie's. There was something of the timbre of the bell in it. “I know it. The insular omelet—unoriginal, but safe. Quite a lot, please. You have coffee, don't you?”

Hay nodded. “Coffee, thanks, yes. Really, Mrs. Billy, your briskness on this extremely sultry morning puts me to shame. I feel I must emulate you.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Billy, pouring out coffee with one hand, and milk with the other, with a deftness born of much practice. “Strike out a line for yourself. Attack the bones. One lump, I think?”

“How well you know my eccentricities!”

“Well, you see, ten breakfasts——”

“Eight luncheons,” added Hay, with a touch of grimness.

“Seven teas——”

“Five dinners.”

“Six, I think,” he corrected.

“Six dinners,” she continued, banteringly, “alone with the same man, give a woman an excellent opportunity of getting to know his little ways—almost as excellent as if she were married to him.”

“More excellent,” said Hay, gloomily.

“More excellent,” laughed Mrs. Billy, but with a keen glance at her host. She saw a look of great pain come into his eyes, and she noticed that his lips trembled.

“Well, now,” she added, endeavoring, by being studiously bright, to divert his unpleasant thoughts, “what are your movements for the day?”

“Well, I——”

“I know to a comma. Some of your pippin-faced tenants have appointments with you. You have to see Farmer Tomlinson about taking down his barbed wire before cubbing commences, and Farmer Wilkins about those odious slates on the roof of his new barn. Tiles must be used instead.”

Hay pushed away his untasted breakfast. “Yes, I'm afraid I have rather a busy——”

“Don't apologize,” said Mrs. Billy. “For my part, I have only one wish—to sleep in the sun. In a minute, I shall get you to tuck me up into that beautiful long-armed, long-legged chair, surround me with cushions, and leave me in peace.”

“If you really wish it, Mrs. Billy, I shall be only too glad. Viola, I fancy——”

“Oh, I wouldn't disturb Viola, for worlds! I find the sun the most delicious companion, believe me.”

Hay began to dig holes in the salt with a silver apostle spoon, and Mrs. Billy knew, knowing men, that he was about to make a clean breast of the subject that was first in his thoughts.

“It's very kind of you to put it like that,” he said, after a long pause; “very kind. Viola is your friend, and you came to see, and be with, her. Honestly, my dear Mrs. Billy, I have been—not worried, because, as everybody knows, I'm a most easy-going chap, quite un-jealous, and all that, don't you know, and, of course, I know and trust Vi so implicitly. But——”

“Well?” Mrs. Billy's sympathetic voice attracted confidence.

Hay dropped the spoon, and pushed the salt-cellar away. His eyes met Mrs. Billy's fair and square.

“But I've been wondering whether you've been thinking that it is rather queer form that we should be left to entertain each other so much.”

Mrs. Billy's reply was perfectly truthful.

“Not the least little bit, dear man. I know Billy, you see.”

A gleam of hope crossed Hay's face. “Quite so, quite so,” he said, quickly.

“I like him to be amused,” continued Mrs. Billy. “It saves me the trouble—and he wants constant amusement. Vi doesn't seem to mind, and I adore lazing in the sun. In my opinion, Vi is an admirable hostess; I feel that she does unto others as she wishes others, under similar circumstances, to do unto her. She places entertaining among the fine arts. Billy is happy; I am happy. So, my dear friend, don't spoil it all by being glum yourself. Now, will you?”

Hay saw the argument from her point of view. But his point of view was not the same. As a host, he was delighted that his wife should entertain his old friend Hutton, but he saw no reason why his scheme of entertainment should demand the monopoly of his wife.

“Not I,” he said. “I was thinking then about you. I was nervous—no, hardly nervous, but perhaps a little afraid, that you——'”

“Well?”

“Well, that you might perhaps—er—misunderstand the position.”

Mrs. Billy watched him draw the salt-cellar nearer, and begin digging holes again. Any one who knew her well could have told by the expression of her eyebrows that she had made up her mind to a course of action. There was no banter in her voice when she spoke.

“I don't really misunderstand,” she said, “though I have tried to persuade you that I do. You are jealous.”

Hay, metaphorically, flung down his cards.

“I am,” he said, earnestly; “horribly!”

“Well, I can assure you there is no need for you to be. This is a harmless flirtation.”

“For ten days, all day long, hour after hour—harmless!”

“Certainly. I repeat, from a most ripe knowledge, quite harmless.”

“You're utterly certain?”

“I'm utterly certain.”

“I'm not. Prove that there is no necessity for uneasiness.”

“I will soon do that,' said Mrs. Billy. “About once a year a husband gets bored—not precisely with his wife, but with his surroundings.”

“I don't,” said Hay.

“I mean the husband, generally. About once a year the wife frets at the touch of the hand on the curb—not her husband's hand, exactly, but the hand of her surroundings. She knows that she used to be very beautiful, very fascinating, very charming. That is, she knew it before she married, for most men thrust the fact upon her notice. But the husband has a way, however really affectionate and faithful he may be, of taking things for granted. He is perfectly aware of the fact that his wife is beautiful, charming and fascinating, but he doesn't see the use of telling her so. Why should he? But, you see, madame the wife likes to be told by the husband that she is beautiful, and she likes to be told often. It is as necessary to her, more necessary to her, than daily bread. That is the little irritant, and it is at this moment that another man comes on the scene, who admires her and tells her so. Mark that, my friend. He tells her so, and consequently he appears, at first, to possess every virtue the husband lacks.”

Hay listened with the utmost attention.

“And when,” he said, “the wife does become a little restive, and some one turns up, to thrust the fact of her beauty upon her, what course does the husband pursue?”

“The wise husband,” replied Mrs. Billy, “allows the little flirtation.”

“Allows it!” cried Hay.

“Certainly. It bores the wife to death in about a month. All the time she is finding out how unlike the husband this other man is, and it is always to the other man's disadvantage. When the incident is over, the husband, if he is wise, sets back his calendar to the honeymoon, and God's in His heaven, all's right with the world.”

Hay rose from his chair with a gay laugh. He raised his arms, and seemed to fling off a heavy pack that had been fastened to his shoulders. His whole face was alight.

“Mrs. Billy,” he said, “you're a splendid little woman. How do you know these things?”

Peg laughed. “Observation, dear man, and—and experience.”

“Well, but I've had heaps of experience. Do you mean to say that I've no observation?”

“My dear Archie,” she replied, with a charming touch of sententiousness, “no amount of observation or experience ever enables a man to understand a woman.”

“Why not?”

“Because a man looks at a woman through the strongest magnifying-glass that's invented, and that confines him to the surface; whereas a woman uses the X-rays of intuition, and sees right through. Don't worry any more, Archie; there's not the slightest need.”

Hay strode over to his friend's wife and gave her his hand.

“You have made me feel a different man,” he said, gratefully. “I am eternally grateful. I'm a jealous brute, but, you see——”

“You're very much in love with your wife, I know, and that is where, if you would only realize it, your safety lies.”

“How?”

“No woman in this world will give up a certainty, a solid possession, for something which might turn to nothing as she grasped it. I am sure that Viola would find out before she grasped. See?”

She shook his hand again, and went over to the window.

“I see,” said Hay. “Thanks so much.”

Mrs. Billy stood in exactly the same spot, in exactly the same attitude as Viola had done, half an hour before, and Hay stood watching her as Hutton had watched Mrs. Hay, but not in the same way. There was admiration in his eyes, certainly, but there was also a great respect. The former had been in Hutton's eyes, but not the latter. It makes all the difference.

“Now, for any sake,” cried Mrs. Billy, with mock impatience, “put me into that chair. I've talked so much, and eaten so much, that I must sleep in the sun.”

Hay drew the long chair out of the room into the veranda and on to the edge of the lawn.

“How will that do?” he asked.

“Splendidly. Now for cushions.”

“How many?”

“Hundreds,” she said.

He collected as many as he could carry, and took them out. “Here are thousands.”

Mrs. Billy sank into the chair with a sigh of content.

“Good,” she murmured; “this is perfect.”

“It will be when you have a sunshade,” said Hay.

“Sunshade!” cried Mrs. Billy. “Go away, you Goth. I want the sun.”

“You'll be pickled!” warned Hay.

“No,” corrected Mrs. Billy; “preserved.”

Hay chuckled, and, pretending that he thought she was already asleep, crept elaborately away on tiptoe.

IV

““The wise husband,” Mrs. Billy said, if you remember, “allows the little flirtation,” and in that short, philosophical sentence touched upon the turning point in the domestic happiness of nearly every married couple.

It is not necessary to be married to know that marriage and racing are the two most uncertain institutions in the world, because in the former, as in the latter, people back their fancies without having any certain information. Neither need one have any doubt as to which is the more expensive hobby. There must be any number of millions of married people in this country. The happy ones could, I suppose, be counted upon the fingers of two hands; for it is not easy to be happy though married. It is a problem Adam and Eve set, and it has not often been solved.

The reasons are many and obvious. People meet under romantic circumstances, and, mistaking their merely artistic feelings for love, marry. They know nothing of each other's character or temperament. They have had no time to study hereditary tendencies. In most cases, even banking accounts are not entered into. More foolish still, the man lifts the woman from mother earth, and places her on the summit of a stucco pedestal. Disillusionment follows as the night the day; and upon its heels come the daily jangle, the nightly tirade. Every jangle, every tirade, shakes the cement of the pedestal. To these marriages there are only three ends: judicial separation, divorce, or a life of angry looks, constant sarcasm, unpleasant innuendo, utter and complete unhappiness—the ruin of two lives.

Mrs. Billy Hutton's marriage was one of those which could be counted upon the fingers of two hands. She lived with Billy a life of complete content. She had not entered into a life-partnership with him without being thoroughly aware of all his bad, as well as all his good, qualities. She knew that he was weak, easily led, extravagant, self-indulgent, and inclined to sulk if he did not get his own way. But she knew that he was extremely kind-hearted, very generous, and, above all, very devoted to, and a little frightened of, herself.

On his side, he, too, had studied, before marriage, the character of the woman who had agreed to be his wife. At the first blush, her beauty and charming personality, her equability, her delicious laugh, her accomplishments, blinded him to everything else. But he soon discovered that he was the more in love of the two; that it would be necessary for him, for all her good nature, to treat her wishes with deference; that, in short, she demanded quite quietly, but quite firmly, his respect as well as his admiration. Without any discussion or argument, a mutual compact was agreed to that there should be an equal amount of give-and-take on both sides. Each trusted the other implicitly, and so at once, from the outset, jealousy, the rock on which the matrimonial canoe so often splits, found no place. “The wise husband allows the little flirtation,” Mrs. Billy had said; and she had always mentally added, “the wise wife, also.”

During the five years of their married life, Billy had carried on several flirtations with pretty women. During the course of these temporary aberrations, Mrs. Billy had remained passive, secure in the knowledge of her own power and in her husband's loyalty. It so happened that she herself had been too busy, first with furnishing her house, and subsequently in entertaining, or being entertained, to go in for extraneous flirtation. The right sort of woman flirts only when time hangs heavily on her hands. With Mrs. Billy time never hung heavy. Her days were never long enough.

Wherefore, when Billy took an instant fancy for Viola Hay, and, from the first day of their visit, paid her constant attention, Peg's feelings were merely those of quiet amusement. During the season just at an end, she had found no time to keep up with the latest books. On a visit to the Hays, in their delightful bungalow on the banks of the Thames, all she wanted to do was to read, sit in the sun, write her letters, and recuperate.

But in regard to the Hays, what of them? They also had been married five years. They also were sensible people, who had not rushed blindfold into such a serious undertaking as marriage.

It is true that Archibald Hay was, and always had been, desperately in love with his wife. But he was one of those men who, having been many years in the army, have been taught to repress their feelings. He looked upon the expression of his deep sentiments as bad form. His manner to Viola was always consistently deferential and courteous, but he rarely let himself go, and never before a third person. In many ways he resembled Mrs. Billy. He had the same equable temperament, the same capability of being busy with very little to do, the same hatred of killing time. But, unfortunately for himself, and for the lasting success of his marriage, he was a jealous man.

In many ways, also, Viola Hay resembled Hutton. She, too, was self-indulgent, weak, easily led, extravagant, and inclined to sulk. She married Archie Hay because she loved him. She never for a moment stopped to give a thought to his temperament, and she never had been quite able to understand his notions as to repression of feeling.

It cannot be said that her five married years had ever contained a genuinely unhappy hour. Equally, it cannot be said that they had ever contained a genuinely and completely happy one.

Shortly before the Huttons' arrival at the bungalow, she had been left a good deal to herself. Hay had been called away to their place in Scotland to see to the building of a new wing. During the inert days spent alone, she had ruminated over her husband's matter-of-fact manner of regarding her, and had encouraged a slight, almost imperceptible soreness into an open wound. When Billy came, she gladly played her part in the flirtation he seemed so anxious to begin, and, smarting under the impression that her husband cared less for her then than he did at the time of their marriage, threw aside her good sense, and allowed herself to be in Billy's company from morning till night, day after day.

It is obvious that very little was needed to render the partnership between the Hays a deplorably unhappy one.

V

Very shortly after Mrs. Billy had been made entirely comfortable in the sun, two servants took possession of the breakfast-room. They saw the chair on the edge of the lawn, but no sunshade and no head; and so, with the inaccuracy of their class, came to the conclusion that the chair was empty. Therefore, they didn't think it necessary to lower their voices.

“Please, Jane, be quick,” said Barming, appealingly. “It's my evenin' out, an' these double breakfasts is worse than invalids.”

“Yes,” replied Stanner, packing up the plates, “they do delay somethin' awful. I couldn't fancy a flirtation with kidneys about. “I prefer moonlight.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. One of the nicest days I ever 'ad was August bank 'oliday a twelvemonth. Me an' Jim went to Brighton by excursion. That train was crowded, an' no mistake. An' Jim, when the tunnels come”—she giggled—“well, he did flirt!”

Stanner buttered a piece of toast on both sides, and balanced a large piece of strawberry jam in the middle of it with the absorbed air of a connoisseur. “Yes, that's very nice; but Jim, he's not what I call a real flirt.”

“Jim's not!” cried Barming. “Give 'im a trial in a tunnel with no lights in the carriage!”

Stanner poured herself out a cup of coffee, and put into it three lumps of sugar.

“Yes, but tunnels ain't classy. Now, does Jim take your 'and at breakfast, look daggers of love, an' say, 'You're too 'eavenly for anything! I shall crush the life out of you in a minute!'”

Barming gave a scornful laugh. “No,” she answered, “nor any one else, for that matter.”

“I 'eard it just now spoken in 'ere.”

Barming almost dropped a cup. Her face lighted up with curiosity and eagerness.

“The missus and Mr.——”

“That's it,” said Stanner, with the air of one who holds a hand of court cards. “I was comin' in while they was eatin'. I was off like a bird. I've 'ad no experience in missus's flirtations, but I don't suppose she likes people to come in sudden. I 'adn't noticed anything before, but if that's the kind of thing 'e says to 'er, it seems to be a bit off the normal.”

“It's in the 'eat, I suppose,” said Barming, in a quiet, awed voice.

“An',” went on Stanner, delighted with the impression she was creating, “Mr. 'Utton's no kid in these affairs. 'E can find 'is way about, I know. You can see 'is lady's used to 'is little games, too. They don't disturb 'er, Rose, any more than watchin' 'im eat poached eggs.”

“You mean to say Mrs. 'Utton don't mind?”

“Mind! Not she! She puts me in mind of 'Nelly Bly caught a fly, tied it to a string, let it go a little way, an' then—she pulled it in.'”

Barming became thoughtful. “That's all very well, but some string breaks.”

“Or slips off. You're right, Rose. An' between you an' me an' this table-cloth, this is the time that Nelly Bly's fly slips. Of course, Mrs. 'Utton mayn't 'ave 'ad it so bad before as to make 'er nervous, but then she's never 'ad such a lovely woman as missus against her. Besides, missus knows the ropes. She's been to India.”

“More 'eat,” murmured Barming. “And do you think she cares about 'im, Jane?”

“Yes, Rose, I do. An' no wonder. "E's just my sort—dark, with a curled mustache, a cleft in 'is chin, and, oh, my! what eyes!”

The grandfather clock in the hall struck ten.

Stanner, with a quick, characteristic movement, caught up her tray and hurried to the door, speaking as she went.

“Now, Rose, what are you doin', gossipin' like this? A nice row you'd get into if missus 'adn't gone to Lover's Backwater. Come away now, do!”

Barming put the table-cloth under her arm, and picked up the other tray.

“That's it, say it's me,” she said, and followed Stanner out.

The door closed with a bang.

Quite quietly, Mrs. Billy rose from her chair, and, with a peculiar little smile in her eyes, came into the room.

The onlooker always sees more of the game than the batsman or the bowler.

VI

“'Let it go a little way,'” quoted Mrs. Billy, aloud, “'and then she pulls it in.' ... Ye-es! and then she pulls it in!”

Quick footsteps came nearer and nearer. Archie Hay came into the room hurriedly. He looked as white as a ghost. Without a glance at Mrs. Billy, he made his way to a chair, and, sitting down heavily, covered his face with his hands.

Peg's heart went quickly. A kind of prophetic feeling of approaching evil seized her. She shook it off as her eyes caught the exquisitely placid landscape without. How was it possible for anything evil to exist in such a beautiful world?

She caught the busy humming of bees, the throbbing note of the lark pouring out his soul to the sun; her eye took in the flaming colors round the lawn, the many greens of the unmoving trees, heavy-laden with leaves, the cool shadows thrown upon the water. Everywhere without the hand of peace rested tenderly.

Then her eyes turned into the room. There sat a man, with his face buried in his hands, a usually undemonstrative man, endeavoring, it seemed to her, to shut out a sight he would have given everything he possessed in the world never to have seen.

“Archie,” she whispered, “what is it?”

Hay made a slight movement, but answered not a word.

She crossed to his side, and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Dear old Archie, what has happened?”

“Give me a minute, Mrs. Billy,” said Hay, hoarsely. “I've got to tell you, but I haven't the strength or the pluck yet. Wait—a minute.”

“Very well, dear friend,” she replied, quietly.

There followed a pause. To Peg, whose every nerve was tense, through whose brain a hundred wild surmises chased one another, the minutes seemed like hours. She sat on the window-seat, with her hands spread out on the vermilion cushions, and waited.

Her neat figure in its white frock was thrown up against the dark oak of the window-frames. A glint of sun fell upon her head, and set her hair on fire. She looked very young and slight.

Suddenly, Hay got up, with a forced laugh.

“Well, Mrs. Billy,” he said, “I'm afraid this time my magnifying-glass saw further than your X-rays. This is, I suppose, the exception that proves the rule. I—I don't know how to tell you.”

Mrs. Billy had herself well under control. “Don't try,” she said, quietly. “I can guess. They've carried their flirtation just a little over the border, eh?”

Hay groaned. “A little over the border! My God! I saw them——”

He broke off, and flung out his hand. “I spoke to them. I told them to come here. I told them we'd better discuss the matter coolly—coolly! So they're coming. They are on their way. They'll be here in five minutes, and I shall lose her—lose her!”

His voice broke. Then he pulled himself together, angrily, and faced the wife of the man he wished from his soul he had never met.

“Forgive my selfishness. You will suffer equally with me. Believe me, I am sick for you—sick! If I can do anything—if I can help you in any way—for both our sakes...”

Mrs. Billy sprang up from the window-seat, and caught Archie's hands excitedly.

“For both our sakes pull yourself together now. We have come to the crossroads in our lives. Now there's a certain way out of most situations of this kind, and there's a certain way out of this.”

“I see no way,” said Hay. “I see only the divorce-court looming on the horizon.”

“That's true. I don't minimize the danger. But I've got a theory that a sense of humor, firmly applied, can turn every serious drama into a light comedy.”

Hay drew himself up, and looked very hurt.

“I am afraid,” he said, gravely, “that I regard this matter as a serious one.”

Mrs. Billy put out her hand, appealingly.

“And I, too. But will you trust me, Archie? Will you, for once, follow a woman's lead? Will you believe in a woman's instinct? Will you, Archie, will you?”

“Mrs. Billy,” replied Hay, “I'll do anything on God's earth you tell me, but—they were in each other's arms!”

Mrs. Billy's lips tightened, but she smiled cheerily.

“Forget that,” she said. “Let us try, both of us, to forget that. It's the most evanescent phase. We'll make them sorry, in the next forty-eight hours, that they ever met, if you'll only obey me now.”

Hay caught something of her confidence. “I will!” he exclaimed; “I will, I swear!”

“Good!” cried Mrs. Billy. “Can you act?”

“I've played small parts as an amateur.”

“I cast you now for the leading part in this play, and I want you to act with all the spirit and resource that you possess.”

“I confess,” began Archie, nervously, “that I hardly see——”

“Quick! Listen to me! When they come in, take up an uncompromising position by the fireplace, with the most determined expression on your face. I will sit on the settee, with my face hidden from their view, my whole attitude denoting grief. Then proceed to dress them down in the most scathing words at your command. Begin by pointing out that they have done their best to ruin our lives, and end by stating that you have no belief in divorce, and so don't feel justified in giving Viola her freedom. Then turn to me, and, with all the passion you can muster, confess that you have grown to love me, and ask me if I will trust my ruined life to you. I will rise, and look at you with a wondering gratitude in my eyes—oh, I'm a little Bernhardt in my way, believe me!—place my hand in yours, and we will drift out after the manner of Sydney Carton and Mimi.”

“But,” said Hay, “if they love each other?”

Mrs. Billy's voice became very serious.

“Archie,” she said, “I'm not fooling you; I know that Vi doesn't love Billy, and that Billy doesn't love her. They'll say they do, but they would neither of them break up their homes for untold gold. We, you see, use up our superabundance of electricity in hundreds of energetic ways. They don't, and the sun simply fires it. That's the whole thing. It all means nothing, and if we apply the non-conductor, humor, sharply and decisively upon their respective heads, you will soon discover how very little their hearts are concerned. Will you try this plan?”

Hay took Mrs. Billy's hand and kissed it.

“Try? Of course, I will try. I can't be grateful enough to you for all your courage and readiness. It makes me realize what an egregious ass I should have made of myself if I had not had your common-sense view shown me just at this moment. Yes, I will try, if only to show my gratitude to you, you brave little woman, and—and I pray God your plan will work.”

“'Ssssh!" whispered Peg; “here they come. Act, act, for all you're worth!”

VII

The rustle of a gown on the grass drifted into the room. Slow, heavy steps followed. Viola gave a curious, cold little laugh, and walked with her peculiar, swan-like movement, into the room. She shot a quick glance at her husband, who stood, bolt upright, in front of the fire, and at Peg, who sat on the settee, in her studied attitude. She then deliberately arranged the cushion in a big easy-chair, and sat down, drumming her fingers on the arms of it.

Billy followed her. He looked nervous and ill at ease and sulky. He flung his panama hat into a corner and, without looking at his wife, stood by a cabinet in one of the angles of the room, and commenced to fidget with a china god with movable arms and head.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

Unable to bear the silence, Hutton turned his head toward Hay. “Well?” he said, with a burst. “What the devil do you mean to do about it?”

Hay looked up slowly, and spoke with studied contempt and sarcasm.

“I'm really sorry, Hutton, to have to keep you waiting. The situation, I find, is a little difficult to comprehend.”

Hutton endeavored to hide his discomfort by bluster.

“There's not much comprehension needed, it seems to me,” he said. “I love your wife, and your wife loves me. There's the thing in a nutshell.”

Hay's hands closed tightly, and a gleam of jealous anger came into his eyes.

“No doubt,” he replied, controlling his voice with an effort, “that part seems to you easy of comprehension. I admit the narrowness of my point of view. But it's the final issue that requires thought, I find.”

“We'll go to France, if you like, or Timbuctoo. I don't mind. If you want to pot at me, you can.”

Viola threw back her head, and laughed scornfully. “Really, are we in the Middle Ages? Are such things allowed? In any case, need we be so—extreme?”

Hay cleared his throat, and altered his attitude. Watching him from the corners of her eyes, Mrs. Billy came to the conclusion that the stage had lost a remarkable actor.

“My dear Viola, my excellent friend Hutton, and my dear Mrs. Billy,” he said, looking, as he spoke, from one to the other, “beyond all else I wish, if possible, to avoid anything in the nature of an unpleasant scene. I am particularly anxious not to keep you in a hottish room longer than necessary, but I must ask you to give me a few moments of your time. Mrs. Billy, you know why we are here.”

“You told her?” cried Hutton, in a tone of righteous indignation.

“I told her,” replied Hay, quietly.

“Good Lord!”

“Yes, I told her. We will waive the fact, Hutton, that you and I have been close friends for years. We will waive the fact that my wife has been Mrs. Billy's closest friend for a still longer period. We will agree that all's fair in”—he gave a little smiling bow—“love. Therefore, what is the point at issue? You tell me you and my wife love each other. I presume for ever and ever—passionately—till death parts you.”

The sarcasm stung Billy into an angry retort. “You presume damn well right,” he said.

Hay bowed again, with another easy smile. Mrs. Billy felt almost compelled to cry, “Bravo!” especially when she saw that his hands were trembling.

“So,” he continued, “there is, at any rate, no need for us—Mrs. Billy and me—to consider either of you because you have looked after yourselves so well. Consideration must be given solely to Mrs. Billy and to myself.”

With a little, bored sigh, Mrs. Hay stretched herself lazily. “Isn't this rather long-winded?” she asked.

“I will be quite brief,” said her husband. “I merely want to ask you what we are to do—Mrs. Billy and I. Has either of you thought of us? Naturally, you have been too occupied in thinking of each other! I may say at once that we have no intention of ending this matter in the usual way. There is something so banal about the seventh day in the divorce-court—still proceeding. We have no ambition to emulate the shining lights of smart society. It is extremely expensive, and quite unnecessary, as we do not wish to advertise. Besides, it would effectually extinguish our lights. There is another way. We will follow your example.”

He paused. Hutton looked up quickly, with a deep flush. Mrs. Hay's eyebrows lost their affected indifference, and a look of something like fright came into her eyes.

“We will follow your example,” repeated Hay. “There shall be no scandal, no publicity, no divorce-court, but with you two under the same roof to satisfy the requirements of convention, Mrs. Billy and I will lead our lives together.” With a movement of tender solicitude, which was worthy of Charles Wyndham, he turned toward Peg. “Mrs. Billy—Peg—there is no longer any need for me to keep silence. For many days I have seen you constantly. What can that mean to any man who can appreciate all your splendid gifts to their full value? Only one thing.”

He paused again, and caught a look of admiration and amusement from Mrs. Billy.

Viola's expression had undergone a complete change. Her fingers drummed no more on the arms of the chair. She sat bolt upright, staring at her husband, startled, unable to believe that what she heard was not being spoken in a dream.

As for Billy Hutton, he stood with his mouth open, with all the color gone from his face. He looked like a man badly knocked out after about with the gloves.

Hay went nearer to Mrs. Billy, and bent slightly over her chair.

“I have been loyal to my wife, as you have been loyal to your husband. They have proved dead-sea fruit.” He then put into his voice a touch of passion. “But you are the true, the intoxicating vine. Let us eschew all thoughts of unholy matrimony, and cling together through our lives in free and perfect bliss. Peg, will you place your sweet hand in mine, and trust in me?”

Viola rose from her chair, involuntarily, as though drawn up from it. Hutton held his breath, and fixed his eyes with a look of appeal upon his wife. She, Peg, gave her hands to Hay, and stood by his side. There was something very simple and touching in the action.

“Whither thou goest,” she said, in a low, sweet voice, “I will go. Thy people shall be my people, and your life my life.”

With his eyes fixed on hers, out of which she managed, with a great effort, to keep a look of intense amusement and sense of fun, Hay led her slowly out of the room and across the lawn to the river.

In blank amazement and inexpressible horror, Viola watched them go.

Hutton, in a kind of frenzy of rage, dashed the china god off the cabinet, and then kicked the jagged pieces into a corner of the room.

In the distance, a pea-hen gave a sad cry.

VIII

That evening, Viola and Billy Hutton had tea and dinner alone together. They waited for the others to come until both meals were cold.

Viola handed Hutton a cup of tea in silence. He stirred it angrily, looked into it for several minutes, and put it down, untasted.

Many times between tea and dinner he went into the bungalow and called, “Peg! Peg!” Many times he stumped across the lawn to the boat-house, and scanned the river to the right and left.

The sun sank slowly, reluctantly, behind a mass of crimson clouds. The birds chattered about the doings of the day, and went to sleep. Myriads of gnats, in battalions, chased one another in their aimless, energetic way, and retired for the night, no one knew where. Bees, honey-laden and tired, went home, and wasps gave up their search for jam and fruit till the next day. Shadows lengthened as the sun retired, and the moon rose upon a quiet, placid world.

For the third time Stanner sounded the dinner-gong.

With a sense of injury too deep to put into mere words, Billy again visited the boat-house, and Viola peered into the shadow and listened eagerly for the plash of oars.

Neither noticed the exquisite effects of the trees cut sharply against the cloudless sky. Neither noticed the thin line of silver which touched everything like a layer of snow. Neither enjoyed the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle which hung.upon the quiet air. Both were filled with horror and self-pity. Both were thinking bitterly of the unaccountable immorality so suddenly developed by their respective better-halves.

While they pretended to eat dinner in silence at opposite ends of the table, Peg, in the best of spirits, and Archie Hay, dismal and cheerless, rested themselves at a meal in an arbor in the garden of a hotel two miles down the river.

Rising unsatisfied in every sense of the word, Billy left the room without a remark to Mrs. Hay, and proceeded to pack his clothes. Then he sent Stanner to Mrs. Hay to ask whether the dog-cart might be made use of, and, having obtained permission, bundled his kit-bag into it, jumped in beside the groom, and drove furiously into the night.

His destination proved to be the station at Maidenhead. Arrived there, he tipped the puzzled groom, told him he was going to London on particular business, watched the dog-cart disappear on its return journey, and took a cab, with his kit-bag, to the Bull Inn. Here he sulkily engaged a room, had his bag sent to it, and took up an unapproachable position in the corner of its comfortable private bar, and steadily read a two-weeks'-old sporting paper upside down till midnight, when he went angrily to bed.

He would tell you, if you asked him, that he heard the church clock strike every hour of the early morning. And he would be most indignant if you were to smile incredulously.

Viola, who had by ten o'clock worked herself into the most furious temper, went up to her room and locked the door. Her maid came and tapped timidly, and was ordered away. Her windows were open, and at every sound she started to her feet and listened eagerly. The minutes between ten o'clock and half-past ten seemed to her the longest she had passed in her life.

Suddenly, she heard the swirl of a dress and steps coming from the river. Trembling, and on the verge of tears, she ran swiftly to the door, unlocked it and stood listening.

If Archie had entered at that moment she would have gone on her knees to him and begged forgiveness.

But no Archie came.

Mrs. Billy made her way quickly up-stairs, humming a little air, stopped at Mrs. Hay's door for a moment and called out, brightly, “'Good night, Vi!” and passed on to her room.

For an hour Viola stood listening and waiting. Then, at last, unable to bear the suspense, she went down to the hall. It was in darkness except for the light of the moon. She passed from the breakfast-room to the dining-room, from the dining-room to Archie's smoking-room. Each place was empty.

“Archie! Archie!” she whispered.

No answer came. An owl hooted, and far away in the distance a dog barked. The silence frightened her.

She turned and went back quickly to her room. The air chilled her. She crossed to shut the window, and, with a hot pain in her heart, saw that the bachelor's room in the boat-house was lighted up. Archie was there.

With a little sob, she flung herself face downward on the bed, and cried like a child.

IX

Four exquisitely fine days passed. On the Friday morning, after Hay and Mrs. Billy had breakfast alone, Stanner and Barming proceeded to turn out the room—a domestic revel which, though quite necessary, is always calculated to undermine the temper of the man of the household.

All the furniture in the many-cornered, oak-wainscoted breakfast-room was covered with cloths; all the chairs were piled upon the table. Barming, with a duster tied over her head, was on her knees, polishing the parquet floor. Stanner, out on the veranda, was shaking mats vigorously. The little clouds of dust shot forth at each shake.

She suddenly stopped her operations, and, looking round the corner of the door, gave a soft, excited whistle.

Barming started nervously, and paused in her work.

“Oh, Jane, don't!” she said, fretfully. “Whistle before five of a Fri-day, and you'll be sure to cry before ten of a Saturday.”

Stanner dropped the mats, and ran into the room.

“Rose,” she whispered, “she's at it again.”

“Who's at what?” asked Barming.

“Why, the missus. Creepin' about like a panther after the master an' Mrs. 'Utton.”

“Oh, Lor'!” said Barming, looking uneasily over her shoulder.

“Do you know,” Stanner continued, “that this is the fourth day of this hide-an'-seek business?”

“The fourth! Well, there's no animal can fly so fast as the time, they say!”

Stanner returned to the window, collected the mats, and went on her knees beside Barming.

“Get on, Rose; we're all be'ind time with this blessed room. We can talk as we work.”

“I can't 'urry more than I am 'urrying,” said Barming, with a kind of whine; “I never could. The upset of this 'ouse'old 'as communicated itself to me. I'm all of a tremble for fear of what's comin' next.”

“I like anything like that,” said Stanner. “If I'd been a man, I should 'ave been a detective. I'm going to get right to the bottom of this; I wish I could get some slip into this floor.”

“Seems to me there's too much slip in this 'ouse. Look at Mr. 'Utton, 'e's slipped, an' no mistake! Not a sign of 'im since Monday.”

Stanner chuckled. “And if I know anything about symptoms, the major and Mrs. 'Utton are on the slip, too.”

“Yes,” said Barming, with a kind of triumph, “and all along you kept on saying it was the missus and Mr. 'Utton.”

“Ah, but we've set to partners since Monday. Mr. 'Utton's gone, the missus is left, and the master's carrying on with missus's man's wife.”

“Oh, Jane,” said Barming, with an involuntary laugh, “you do run on!”

“Run on! I should 'ave to be a prize sprinter to keep pace with this lot! They're flying-machines!”

Barming got up and began rearranging the chairs. “I'd give a lot to know 'ow we really stand.”

“Well, look the facts in the face. Mr. 'Utton's turned as gloomy as a coal-'ole, and 'as gone off on 'is own. Where? Can't say. Why? Dunno. The missus is colder, freezinger than ever I've seen 'er.”

“An' yet she pays more attention to the master than ever she done before the 'Uttons come!” exclaimed Barming.

“Artfulness!” said Stanner, knowingly. “She wants something. And Mrs. 'Utton? She's more like a young bee than ever—always on the buzz. An' a limpet couldn't cling tighter to master than she does. 'Will she go there?' says the mistress. 'If Archie likes,' says she, blushin' like a bride.”

“Oh, come, Jane, when did you ever see 'er blushin'?”

“I didn't need to see it, stupid; I 'eard it in er voice.”

Barming got up and commenced removing the covering from the furniture.

“Well, any'ow,” she said, with a touch of pleasure, “missus is fairly out in the cold.”

“Ah, but she won't remain there long,” said Stanner, prophetically. “Take it from me. She isn't the one to sit by while another woman flirts with 'er 'usband, same as Mrs. 'Utton did. Not she! The icier she gets, the 'otter the fermentation inside.... 'Ave you done?”

“Yes,” said Barming, “I've done.”

“Come along, then; we'll get on to the drawing-room. Thank goodness there's a good view of the garden from there. We shall be able to see something of the new lovers, p'r'aps. Bring your cloths.”

“'Makes work a pleasure, don't it?' said Barming, as she—Stanner into the hall.

X

A ripple of merry laughter drifted into the room.

Mrs. Billy, in an ingenuously simple hat, peeped in, and then beckoned over her shoulder.

“Vi's all right, Archie; she isn't here.”

Hay slowly joined her, and followed her into the room. He looked as though he had not slept for several nights. There were lines under his eyes, and he was not so scrupulously well-groomed as usual.

“I'm hot,” he said, “and tired, and very miserable.”

“Of course you are,” replied Mrs. Billy, brightly. “So am I.” And then she laughed merrily, and made herself quite comfortable in a deep armchair. “What a chase!” she added. “She seemed determined not to let us out of her sight this morning.”

Hay lighted a cigarette, took one puff and flung it gloomily away. “I can't understand it,” he said.

“Nor I—quite. But if only she would look a little fatigued herself, how it would help me. She never appears to hurry, and yet she won't catch us. It's a horrid sensation.”

“Poor darling!” said Archie, with deep feeling, “and she so hates walking.”

“But only think, my dear Archie, what large doctor's bills we are saving her! Do you know how I feel? Like a girl again, out of bounds, with a school-mistress after me.”

Hay sat down, heavily. “And do you know how I feel?”

“No; how?”

“Like a criminal. The whole time you and I are playing our parts, I'm wishing we had never taken them up. I don't think I've ever been so out of temper in my life. What good is it doing? Why does Vi follow us about?”

Peg began to fan herself. “My dear man, for the best of reasons. She's jealous.”

“Jealous!” cried Archie, eagerly. “Are you sure?”

Mrs. Billy grew sympathetic when she caught the hopeful look in Hay's eyes.

“Quite sure,” she said. “And, like all jealous people, she's forced to rub salt well into the wound. Every time I take your arm, every time I smile deliciously at you—and I can smile deliciously when I try—every time I contrive to induce you to bend your head down to me—and it isn't often—in goes the salt. She hates watching us, but she is obliged to do so to convince herself that what she believes about us is really true.”

“What does she believe?”

“She believes all you said to me on Monday. She believes that you and I, as counsel for the prosecution always puts it, are more to each other than we should be. Oh, isn't it too funny!” Mrs. Billy's silvery laugh echoed among the beams.

“No,” replied Hay, “it isn't funny. I find the whole affair ghastly—ghastly! How in the world shall I ever persuade her that you and I have really been playing parts? It's all very well for you to laugh. You understand these things—I don't. I confess I have no gift for psychology. I'm clean out of it. Personally, I can't see how it is possible for her to be so easily deceived. I suppose you do?”

“Of course! I'm not a blind bat of a man, thank goodness.” Mrs. Billy grew suddenly grave, and, leaning forward, put a kind hand on Hay's arm. “The truth of it is, dear Archie, that she loves you.”

“She's a precious peculiar way of showing it,” replied Archie, bitterly.

“Oh, lots of us are like that! The point of the whole thing is as clear as daylight. Vi has been too certain of you. She has believed that nothing she could do or say could ever make you leave off caring for her.”

“And she's right. I am more in love with her to-day than when we married.”

Mrs. Billy looked roguishly at him. “That, my dear Archie,” she said, “is brought home to me with almost stunning force every time I try to induce you to even pretend to make love to me. You constantly jeopardize my lovely plan! But, you see, Viola has known it, too—up to this walk, and that has been one of your mistakes. Still, with your continued assistance, I am working this out fairly well. I honestly believe that I shall be the cause of your lifelong happiness before many days have passed.”

Hay looked wistfully at her. “Do you, Mrs. Billy? I shall be your grateful admirer to the end of time.”

“Bless you, I also mean to be happy. Some day, when our domestic hearths glisten peacefully again, I shall settle down with a packet of quills and a pound of foolscap, and write a hand-book for the use of married people on, 'How Much Rope to Allow One's Better-Half.'”

Hay paced the room for three or four moments in silence. “I must be a poor sort of husband,” he said, at last, “to drive my wife to flirt with another man.”.

“You see, my dear friend, you don't tell your wife of your adoration quite often enough.”

Hay stopped, and stared at Peg in amazement. “But, my dear Mrs. Billy, I tell her frequently.”

“Frequently,” said Mrs. Hutton, oracularly, “is not often enough for a woman. She requires to be told all the time—vividly, picturesquely. The mistake you have made has been that you have maintained a too placidly contented appearance. You have taken things for granted—and you should never take things for granted with a woman. It fills her with a void—so she flirts. By flirting with Billy, Viola has been trying to stir that calm, soldier-man exterior of yours. Poor dear, I'm afraid she's having a very bad time, in consequence.”

“I hope not.”

“It's a splendid tonic for her. So it is for my old man.”

Hay turned to her, quickly. “By the way,” he asked, “what on earth has Billy done with himself?”

Mrs. Billy broke into a little laugh. “What a funny old thing he is!”

“Don't you feel a little nervous about him? I don't want to frighten you, but suppose he ... well, you know, Mrs. Billy, when a man's down on his luck, a river has an awful fascination.”

Mrs. Billy's laugh became almost hilarious. “Oh, dear, how funny! Oh, Archie, my dear, how comic! Billy hurt himself? Billy? Oh, ho, ho!”

“Well, I'm glad you take it in that way,” said Hay.

“Don't you really know Billy better than that?”

“I only know how I should feel under these circumstances. If you hadn't made me hope there was a chance in this plan of yours, I might have been tempted to go pretty near the river myself.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Billy, with her head on one side, “but then, you see, you take everything very seriously, whereas my Billy does not. He is a thoroughly happy, most charming, and very lovable person, but he is also an egotist, and, oh, so careful never to hurt himself.”

“Still, I wish I could think why he went away, and where he's gone.”

“I can tell you. He went, because the first thing he hates is being uncomfortable; and the situation ... well, it was that! Then, he naturally anticipated some awkward explanation with Viola, and he hates explanations. So he is trusting to me to lift him out of the muddy little pool he has jumped into, dry him and brush him down, wash his face and hands, and dress him up in a nice, clean collar and tie. He was shocked on Monday, miserable on Tuesday, irritable on Wednesday, fidgety on Thursday, and by this morning he has braced himself up to explain to Viola how mistaken they've been—unless, by some chance, he meets me first, and then he'll call upon me to explain for him.”

A look of supreme astonishment crept into Hay's face. “How on earth do you know all this?” he asked.

“Not by clairvoyance,” said Mrs. Billy, “but through the medium of the post.”

“So he's been writing to you, has he?”

“I've had a letter from him every morning.”

“Where's he been, Mrs. Billy?”

“In bed, my friend.”

“In bed? Good heavens!”

“He has spent the last four days in bed.”

“By Jove!”

Mrs. Billy gave up one whole minute to laughter. Her very fingers seemed to issue her sense of amusement.

“Billy always goes to bed when he has made things uncomfortable for himself,” she said. “And now, having proved by his absence from Viola at such a trying moment, how ephemeral were his feelings for her, and as his repeated commands for my presence at his bedside have for the first time been utterly ignored, he has announced his intention of coming to fetch me to-day.”

“Fetch you!” cried Hay, with a very genuine touch of fright. “Will you go?”

“My dear Archie, I am going to leave him in his little muddy pool for quite a long time, so that in the future he may look upon muddy water as singularly unhealthy, and—avoid it.”

A step sounded on the path. Hay started, and held up his finger. “Is that Viola?”

Mrs. Billy smiled sympathetically. “How well you know her step! I didn't hear a sound.”

“I know the touch of her hand on the door; I know the sound of her breath; her step is like a voice to me.”

“You'll be happy one day,” said Mrs. Billy, gently; “I know you will.”

Hay showed more emotion than ever Mrs. Billy had seen him do before. “Pray God you're right,” he said. “I have been hideously to blame to let her get into such a state of mind as to feel the necessity for flirtation—to need some one else to tell her how beautiful she is. You've taught me something, Mrs. Billy. You've made me realize that a man should never sink the worship of the lover in the common-sense, every-day love of the husband. The discipline that demands no sign of feeling is destruction to happiness.... If only I hadn't lost her! If only I'm in time!”

He turned to the window, and listened.

“Is she coming?” asked Mrs. Billy.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then,” cried Mrs. Billy, excitedly, “come here quickly, and sit on the arm of my chair.”

Hay paused, irresolutely. “I'm not ungrateful, Mrs. Billy; you know that, but must we go on——?”

“Of course we must. Why, we've scarcely begun! Be plucky! You promised to see it through. Quickly!”

He did as he was told, grudgingly.

“Now,” continued Mrs. Billy, rapidly, “put your arm over the back, and when Vi comes in, urge me wildly to kiss you. I shall tease you in the orthodox way, and refuse. When you feel that she is well in the room, remove my arm and plant a kiss on my cheek a good inch away from my ear.”

She leaned back in the corner of her chair, as arranged.

Viola entered.

XI

There is nothing so irritating to a jealous wife as to see the other woman refuse her husband's kisses. So peculiar is the jealous temperament, so unreasonable, that a wife suffers far less pain, if the other accepts the husband's kisses with avidity.

With most people, jealousy is not an overwhelming dislike to see the person they love bestow favors upon others, so much as the lurking fear that they wish to do so, and don't. It may be ill-bred, it may be bad form for a man to kiss, in the presence of his wife, a woman who is no relation, but the wife seldom minds. What she does most strongly object to is the fact that he does not kiss the woman in her presence when she knows that he desires very keenly to do it, and she thinks that he will undoubtedly do so behind her back.

It comes to this: there is no jealousy where there is complete trust. Where, oh, my masters, can you put your hand on a man and a woman and say, “These two people trust each other'?

For some minutes, Viola stood watching her husband and her old friend with an expression of resentfulness, disgust and black jealousy.

The stage had lost an extremely clever leading lady in Peg. Her acting of the ingénue in love was superb. She laughed shyly, and dashed quick, inviting glances, and moved her head now to one side, now to another.

“No, Archie, no!” she said, in an affected tone of reproof. “You've surely kissed me enough for one day!”

“Just one more, Peg, please.”

“No,” she replied, putting her hands against his face, “not another one. Not half-a-quarter of one. You've worn a positive thole in my cheek already in these four days—a perfect pit.”

“Why have such a lovely cheek, then? Don't be unkind. Just one more.”

“Well, then,” said Peg, giddily, “the eighth-of-a-sixteenth of one.”

Very unwillingly, Hay bent down and kissed her cheek lightly.

Viola put some account books on her desk, and spoke in a cold, regular voice.

“I trust I shall not disturb you?”

Peg gave an affected little squeal.

“Oh, Archie, get up; it's Viola.”

Hay made a willing effort to do so, but was held tight by Peg, who whispered, “Keep still, stupid! Say something sweet.”

“Don't be such a prude, Peg; I shall stay where I am.”

Peg giggled. “No, I'd really rather you didn't. We shall disturb Viola.”

Hay made another movement, and found himself held fast.

Viola chose a pen in a deliberate fashion. “I came to do my accounts,” she said, “but I dare say they can wait.”

Peg turned her head over her shoulder, with a sweet smile.

“Oh, please go on with them,” she said. “We'll be as quiet as mice, won't we, darling?”

“You're a jolly little mouse,” he replied, with a painful attempt at levity that nearly choked Mrs. Billy.

Viola sat down, and crossed her hands in her lap. “I will wait until you have finished with the room,” she said.

Instantly, Peg jumped up. “Oh, then we'll go into the garden. We couldn't possibly keep you from your accounts. Keep it up,” she added, under her breath, to Archie.

Hay hesitated. At the best, he was a good amateur actor. To continue to play so long and so trying a part was almost beyond him.

“The sun's not so hot,” he said; “suppose we go out in the punt.”

“I should love it. But your hair's all rough, sweetheart,” she added, with a touch of admirable theatricality. “Bend down.”

Hay felt, and looked, horribly uncomfortable. He glanced at his wife, and saw a hard glitter in her eyes, a tight compression of her lips. A great wave of love went out to her, and he longed to fling himself on his knees by her chair and take her in his arms. With an inward feeling of exultation, he became almost convinced that Viola, as Peg assured him, was jealous of him; and if she was jealous, how could she love Hutton?

Barely five seconds passed, while he was arguing to himself, and before he could reply to Peg she had mounted on a foot-stool, and commenced to smooth his hair with her hands.

“How rough some kinds of hair get!” she said, watching the effect on Viola with satisfaction. “That's better. It's beautiful hair—quite the kind I like best. I hope you'll never lose it. Do you think you will?” Then she whispered, “Keep it up—do. Everything's going splendidly.”

“Barbers assure me not,” said Hay, taking up his part again. “I shall go gray pretty soon, though.”

Peg clapped her hands with an exact imitation of the stage ingénue.

“Oh,” she cried, “but I shall adore you with gray hair! I shall bleach mine when yours gets white. Sha'n't we be a jolly old couple?” She put her hand lovingly to his lips. “Kiss it,” she commanded, in an undertone.

Hay kissed it. “You—you darling,” he said, feebly.

Viola rose to her feet, and stood facing them icily. Her effort to repress her anger added two years to her appearance.

“I was going to ask you if you would care to have the launch and supper at Skinner's to-night. The Mclvors want to come, too. We could all come back by moonlight.”

Peg looked at Hay, and then at Viola, and pretended to stutter like a girl newly engaged.

“Oh,” she said, “it's very kind, and—and we should both have liked it very much, but—and it would have been very jolly—but we—to tell you the truth—we thought—but, of course, if Archie would prefer— Would you, Archie?... Say no,” she whispered.

Hay looked resolutely out of the window. “I thought we had arranged to punt to the lock and watch the sunset,” he said.

“So we had, and take supper with us. So I'm afraid we can't join you, Viola; thanks very much.”

“You are going alone in the punt?” she asked, very distinctly.

“You and Billy spent nearly ten days alone in the punt, didn't you?”

Viola's face flamed. “Will you give me your orders as to your supper?” she said.

The moment she had made the remark, Peg deeply regretted it. It sounded so gratuitously cruel. She made two steps toward Viola to beg her pardon, which would have brought down the curtain on the play she and Hay were so strenuously playing for the good of Hutton and Viola.

Hay saw what she was about to do. He put his hand quickly on her arm, and spoke carelessly to his wife.

“It would be kind if you would order two suppers for us,” he said. “Just one of your specially nice suppers. Come, Peg, we are wasting this exquisite morning. Shall I take a book for you?”

Mrs. Billy had regained possession of her histrionic abilities. “Just as though it would be the least use,” she cried, archly. “You know you will not let me read a single word.... He's a delightful companion, isn't he, Viola? Oh, I beg your pardon, but I'm afraid he'll break the arm of every chair in the house. Dear old Archie! is he impatient to get on the river with his sweetheart, then?”

She took his arm, and together they went on the veranda. Archie Hay looked over his shoulder at his wife, whose back was toward him, and kissed his hand. He was the most miserable man in England.

XII

For a quarter of an hour by the clock, Viola Hay remained where she had been left. Her face was white and set, and there was an angry line between her eyebrows. She listened to the sound of Peg's rippling laugh so long as it remained in the air. She did not turn to watch the two across the sun-splashed lawn; her eyes were fixed on the floor.

There came suddenly a look of resolution into them, and she went swiftly to the bell, and rang impatiently.

Stanner found her seated at her desk, writing a telegram. She wrote more precisely, with a firmer, bolder touch than ever before.

“I am leaving home this evening,” she said. “See that my things are packed for a long stay, please.”

“Yes'm,” said Stanner, with a little start.

“Order the carrier to fetch the trunks that will not go on the brougham.”

“Yes'm.”

“I suppose you can get the packing done in time for the nine-thirty?”

“Oh, yes'm!”

“Then tell Dibben to come round at nine.”

“Yes'm.”

“I shall dine alone in the boudoir.”

“Yes'm.”

“Tell cook to have a cold supper packed in the hamper—the supper Major Hay was so pleased with some weeks ago. Cook will remember. And tell her to be particularly careful in packing the aspics. Ask her to place the champagne on ice. It had better be at the boat-house at nine.”

“Yes'm.” Stanner's eyes gleamed with excitement.

“I will travel in my gray coat and hat.”

“Yes'm. ”

“Have this telegram sent to the Coburg Hotel.”

“Yes'm.”

“That's all, thank you.”

Stanner took the telegram, and left the room, with her eyebrows disappearing into her fringe.

Billy Hutton looked into the room, gloomily.

XIII

With an exclamation of relief and delight, Viola ran to him and put her arm through his.

“Oh, Billy!” she cried, with a suspicion of tears in her voice, “how glad, how glad, I am to see you again!'

Billy looked around uneasily, and tried to release his arm.

“Take care, Viola; some one may be looking.”

But Viola was too glad to have some one to speak to after her four lonely, painful days, to notice Billy's utterly changed manner.

“I can't tell you how much I've missed you—how lonely I've been here. What I've had to endure, what I've had to put up with, no one can realize. You, at any rate, love me, and I want your protection and your help. Why did you go away? Where have you been?”

“In London,” replied Billy, sulkily, “on business.”

“What! all the time?” Viola spoke as if the four days had been a month.

“Yes,” said Billy again; “full of work. I say, Vi, don't hold on to me like this, there's a good girl. Suppose the others saw? Where's Peg?”

“Why, with Archie, of course.”

Billy disengaged his arm roughly, and crossed the room with a barely smothered oath.

Viola, still unable to realize the change in Billy's manner, followed.

“I've been so miserable without you,” she said. “Have you been thinking of me all this time?”

Billy stared at her in surprise. Here was a different Viola! Here was a Viola with appeal in her voice and tears in her eyes. This was not the unruffled, assured woman of the world he had left so hurriedly.

“My dear child,” he said, anxiously, “what's come over you? You're not usually so—so clinging!”

“I am so afraid my undemonstrative manner chilled you—drove you away. I am trying to alter, dear. I'm so thankful you've come back! We've so much to discuss, so much to arrange for the future.”

Horribly uncomfortable, Hutton took up an uncompromising position on the bear's skin in front of the fireplace, and pulled his mustache.

“Look here, Viola,” he said, “I think you ought not to talk to me like this. It won't do, you know. Forgive my being—er—quite frank, but we mustn't have a repetition of Monday, whatever happens. That kind of thing makes one feel a complete ass. Of course, as you, no doubt, quite well understand, the whole thing was mere fun on both our parts, utterly misunderstood by Hay and—and my wife.... Oh, Lord, where is Peg?”

An extraordinary metamorphosis took place in Viola's expression. She stepped a couple of paces backward, and turned on the discomfited man a pair of eyes blazing with anger and wounded pride.

“Your wife is carrying out her compact with my husband with remarkable effect,” she said, with biting sarcasm. “They are far more fond and foolish than we ever were, and have none of your false modesty. So far, indeed, from fearing observation, they seek it. They make love to each other in front of other people like a nursemaid and a postman.”

“What!” cried Billy.

“In fact, I have never seen a clearer case of infatuation. Your wife's behavior is almost indelicate.”

Hutton looked about him, wildly.

“There's a mistake—there must be a mistake. Peg's never looked at another man! Besides, I wrote and told her I'd given you up.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Hutton adopted a highly moral tone. “My dear child, it's best to look the matter straight in the face. It was wrong—the whole thing was wrong. Don't you see that yourself now?”

Mrs. Hay laughed, sarcastically. “Isn't it rather late to think of that?” she asked.

“It's never too late. You and I have come to our senses.”

“And our respective better-halves have lost theirs.” Viola's voice rose. “They spend the whole day in each other's arms. They call each other by every term of endearment. They are never apart from morning till night. As a blind for the servants, my husband sleeps in the bachelor-room of the boat-house.”

For the moment, Hutton was too shocked to speak. “How appalling! how awful!” he said, at last.

Viola turned on him, sharply. “Is this sudden morality of yours due to the change of air?” she asked.

“Change of what?” asked Billy, too worried and upset to remember his story of work in London.

“They are merely living up to their compact,” continued Viola. “What can it matter to you? You gave up everything for my sake, if you remember, 'for ever and ever.' If those are not your own words, they were something to that effect. They are now giving us every chance.”

“Chance! What do you mean?”

“I presume you intend to lead your life with me now?”

Hutton's amazement under any other circumstances would have been amusing. “What!” he gasped. “Stop living with Peg? Spoil my life with Peg? Ruin her happiness for the sake of that kind of thing?”

Viola's anger became scathing. “Did you intend to ruin my life, if you could have persuaded me, without any idea of sacrificing your own? Were you merely intent on having your own way without the least intention of paying for it?”

“Why drag in that? I've given up all idea of love-making, so far as you are concerned.”

“Thank you very much. But I greatly fear that you will be forced by circumstances to take it up again.”

“Never!” said Hutton, forcibly. “I must see Peg at once.”

“You can't. She is on the river with my husband. No, it's no use your going away. You may as well stay here and face things. You have come to a wall this time, my friend, and there is no turning to the right or left. There's only one way. You must turn back—and find me, Billy.”

She moved quickly to his side. He realized that she was now filled with only one idea—to revenge herself on Peg, at whatever cost to herself.

“I am ready to go with you wherever you wish. I am ready to be yours, as you so much wanted me to be four days ago. And you must take me—you must.”

Billy was by no means too self-centered not to be able to see that Viola was saying things she didn't really mean; that she was carried away and overwrought by the turn events had taken.

He took her hand kindly. “My dear child,” he said, soothingly, “I'm afraid you don't understand. This has been a great shock to me. I now realize fully what a huge mistake it was to flirt with you. But I can't consent, although I am awfully sorry for you, to ruin Peg's whole life. It isn't possible. You are asking too much.”

“You must leave Peg out of it! Through you I have lost my husband. Do you know what that means to me?”

“My case is the same,” said Hutton, gently. “My wife loves me. She is only piqued because she thinks I no longer love her.”

Viola went off into a shriek of angry, hysterical laughter. “Loves you—you? You mad egotist! Would any woman think twice of you with a man like Archie in the question? Archie has lost his head over Peg. Do you suppose she can resist him?”

“There's no question of resistance. I tell you she loves me!”

“And in regard to me? What is to become of me? You run away to avoid an uncomfortable situation; you stay away for four days, and then you return to make it up with your wife—is that it?”

Hutton lost his temper. “Yes,” he said, “it is.”

“You make a very big mistake. I leave here to-night, and so do you. These two shall be left to themselves.”

Hutton became almost voiceless. “Leave my wife alone with your husband?” he stammered. “You must be mad to think I could do such a thing.”

“You'll find there is method in my madness. Do you, for one instant, suppose that I am the kind of woman to be played with? Do you, for one instant, suppose that I am the kind of woman to let a man treat me as you have treated me, and then leave me?”

“No, no!” said Hutton. “Of course not. You'll do all you can to prevent him from spoiling Peg's life.”

Viola stamped her foot. “On the contrary. You will assist me to ruin your wife's life. Am I to be thrown aside, to be trampled under foot by you, as well as by my husband, for the sake of this insignificant woman? Oh, you fair-weather friend! The first touch of discomfort, the first irritating breath of wind that blows upon you, and you shrivel up! You return crying to your wife to shelter you! But she shall not! You have violated my trust in you, and I will punish you if I have to ruin myself. I am going to divorce my husband—and your wife shall be co-respondent.”

Hutton lost all self-control, and seized Viola by the wrists.

“You devil! Peg shall never be dragged through the courts at the instance of such a woman as you.”

“You think not?” cried Viola, freeing herself with a quick gesture, and going swiftly to the door. “How will you stop me?”

“I'll—I'll kill you first!”

With a peal of derisive laughter, Viola opened the door.

“Ho! you comfortable coward, you superlative egotist! You'll kill me, will you? Try, try, try!”

XIV

One laughs a good deal at the language put into the mouths of characters in melodramas. One is immensely amused at what one sarcastically calls its unreality. One would be infinitely annoyed to be told that when under the stress of emotion brought about by money troubles, domestic upsets, wounded vanity and a hundred other reasons, one says pretty much the same things as these very melodrama characters written by some uneducated hack writer with nothing to bless himself with but a keen sense of the stage.

Yet ninety-nine out of a hundred of us talk more wildly, more superlatively, more ungrammatically every day of our lives over the loss of a collar-stud, the indiscretion of the cook, the erraticalness of the weather, or the fatuity of the War Office, than any character in melodrama. Under these conditions, we lose our sense of perspective and regard ourselves as mountains, everybody else as mole-hills. The veneer of civilization and a polite up-bringing disappears, and we stand forth in all our vulgarity and primevality.

Count the number of “heavy fathers” you know, who lose all sense of humor and restraint, and curse and swear all over the house because some one has removed a penny lead-pencil from such and such a drawer in their desk while, all the while, it is more than probably reposing in their own pocket. Count, if you have the patience, the number of elderly “utility ladies,” who gnash their teeth and call on people to witness the momentary approaching end of the world because some one in the house happens to come down a quarter of an hour late for breakfast. Think of the number of “leading men” you have met who call on heaven to witness the fact that they are “off their drive,” and who wish they were dead when their long-overdue tailor's bill is presented for immediate payment by the Tradesmen's Protection Society. Consider the number of “leading ladies” there are who will tell you that you can save them from ruin if you will only catch the post with a postcard to a laundress, reprimanding her for a superabundance of starch, or who will announce to a startled world that they don't care how soon they die because there is a slight fullness in the waist of a newly-arrived frock.

There is just as much life in melodrama as there is melodrama in life, the only difference between the two being that in melodrama the characters become bombastic over big things, and in life over quite unimportant ones.

This all goes to prove the necessity of assiduously cultivating the power of being able to look at ourselves from the outside—in other words, in cultivating a sense of humor. This sense is the only one which can save us from appearing egregious idiots, and it is the only sense which is utterly neglected. If it were taught us at our mother's knee, rubbed into us at school and the 'varsity, and preached from the pulpit, murder would practically disappear, divorce become a thing of the past, and libel actions would seldom find a place in the list of cases. The quick application of a sense of humor can turn even the most melodramatic situation into one of pure comedy.

If Viola Hay could have seen how ridiculous she looked when she swung Billy Hutton aside, she would never have given such a consummately good imitation of “The Worst Woman in London” when she banged the door behind her after crying, “Try, try, try!”

XV

A few hours later found Hutton and Mrs. Hay alone again in the breakfast-room.

A gorgeous sunset, almost pantomimic in its coloring, was taking place, to the piping accompaniment of a full orchestra of birds.

The sky in the west had already undergone many rapid changes. Gold had turned into crimson, and the river no longer looked a stream of silver, but one of blood. All nature seemed to be watching the sun's triumphant progress. The breeze, enraptured, had forgotten to play among the leaves and grasses. Roses turned their faces up to watch; jasmine and clematis, honeysuckle and periwinkle and geranium leaned forward in order not to lose one detail of the spectacle. Daisies, buttercups and dandelions, the great lower class in the world of flowers, seemed to stand on tiptoe. Pansies were all eyes.

The only people too occupied with ego to see anything but themselves, were Billy and Viola. He paced up and down one end of the room, and she the other.

Neither spoke a word until the crimson had paled and the birds had finished their cantata. Then Hutton stopped in front of the clock, and uttered a smothered exclamation.

“You haven't horsewhipped my husband yet, I suppose?” asked Viola, with a sneer.

“Haven't had the opportunity,” said Hutton, without looking at her.

“What a pity! They've come back, you know.”

Hutton stopped, abruptly. “Come back? When?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“Why?”

“To change for their cold supper. I should think that your wife will probably simplify matters by catching her death of cold. Evening dress in a punt! It's ridiculous!”

“I don't see why,” said Hutton, shortly. “She has a warm cloak. It cost me fifty guineas. If she chooses to change, why shouldn't she?”

Viola shot out a laugh. “Oh, quite so! She can please herself. Some women don't mind looking foolish.”

“Peg couldn't look foolish if she tried,” muttered Billy, with a kind of sulky loyalty.

“Oh!”

“It's too absurd of Hay to think of punting in evening clothes. It's only done by lunatics and cavalry subalterns. He'll look a perfect fool.” He commenced to pace the room again.

“I can't agree with you,” said Viola, coldly. “It is impossible for Archie ever to look a fool, whatever he does. If he likes to preserve the cleanly habit of a change in the evening, why shouldn't he?”

Hutton kicked the leg of an unoffending chair viciously. “No reason at all. There's no law in this free country to prevent a man from making a fool of himself. What time will they be back from this full-dress moonlight picnic?”

“I haven't the least idea.”

A silence fell. A perceptible shadow crept into the room. A party of merry people went down the river in an electric launch, singing a catch. Their voices, unaccompanied by any instrument, lingered musically upon the sleepy air, and finally died away. A solitary blackbird piped shrilly. Far away in the distance, the church clock intoned the hour. Lesser voices of clocks in the bungalow hastened to corroborate.

Hutton broke the silence.

“Are you going to your boudoir?” he asked, politely.

“No,” said Mrs. Hay, with equal politeness.

“Going to stay here?”

“If you have no objection.”

“Oh, no. I only thought that you must be getting tired. You seem to be taking a lot of exercise.”

“I hope I don't bother you?”

“Good Lord, no! I was only thinking of your health.”

Viola smiled disagreeably. “Very sweet of you,” she said. “My health is vigorous, thanks very much. When you get tired, that chair is a most comfortable one.”

Hutton disliked chaff more than anything else in the world. He pulled up short and looked at Viola doubtfully. “My prowling gets on your nerves, I'm afraid?”

“Oh, no! But I know how tired one gets after—long walks.”

Hutton sat down instantly.

Viola looked relieved and a little triumphant. “You will remain on here, of course?” she said.

“Of course,” returned Hutton, with decision.

“Of course,” scornfully echoed Viola. “And when your wife takes my husband to your house, you will trot along after them.”

Hutton looked up quickly. “To my house? What on earth do you mean?”

“That's the arrangement, you know.”

“Is it? I'd like to see Hay put his nose inside my door!”

“For all his reserve of manner, my husband can be a very pleasant companion.”

Hutton leaped out of his chair. “Pleasant companion!” he cried.

Viola watched him go to the window, tear a handful of leaves away from a youthful creeper, and fling them over the veranda.

“Well, you see,” she added, in a matter-of-fact voice, “you don't intend to take any notice of these—well, unconventional proceedings, and so, doubtless, you will share the same roof. I dare say you will soon get used to it. Habit is a wonderful thing, and I can imagine my husband making a charming ami de maison.”

Hutton became almost breathless.

“Mrs. Hay,” he said, “I must ask you not to stand there and make these frightful suggestions. You—you take my breath away.”

“But that's the arrangement, you know,” she reiterated. “The pity of it is that after I have divorced my husband, you will be in the way of his marrying your wife.”

“He shall never marry my wife!” cried Billy, almost hysterically.

“But that's the arrangement, you know.” Mrs. Hay repeated the words as though they were a text. “Is it quite sporting of you to prevent it?”

“Sporting!”

“As your wife will be bound to appear in the divorce-court, she may insist on your divorcing her and settling the whole thing at one sitting. They are marvelously devoted—quite a boy-and-girl love-affair.”

Billy began to be sensibly affected by the insidious way in which Viola made her points. From being pathetic, he grew angry.

“The way they're behaving,” he said, loudly, “is simply disgraceful. It's worse than that—it's revolting. It's—it's—it's the scandal of the neighborhood.”

“Of course it is. I shall certainly be able to call plenty of witnesses.”

“They are out at all times of the day and night alone in a punt—in a punt, mind!”

“They think nothing of that,” said Mrs. Hay, watching him closely.

“And the way they go on in the house is—is bean-feasty. It's shocking! It's horrible!”

“Oh, yes, it's all that. You've a very clear case. But,” she added, preparing to shoot her final arrow, “you won't take any steps, naturally.”

Hutton whipped around. “Why sha'n't I?”

“You have made up your mind, I gather, to wink at the immorality of it all.”

“By gad, I haven't!”

“It suits my purpose well enough. I have no wish for you to divorce your wife. It will serve her right not to be able to marry Archie.”

“Look here, Mrs. Hay,” exclaimed Billy, “I have no intention of being made a catspaw in this matter. Whatever your opinion of this may be, I am not one of those men who condone flagrant immorality.”

Viola had succeeded. If a woman wants to make an obstinate man go her way, she has only to pretend to pull him the other. It is called the policy of the pig.

“No?” she asked. “But what will you do?”

“Go up to-night, and help you institute proceedings.”

It was well that it was nearly dark. Otherwise, Hutton would have seen a look of triumph flood Viola's beautiful face, and he then would have guessed that she had been working all the time to get him to say and think this.

“I suppose,” she said, simulating indifference very cleverly, “that there's no dissuading you when once you have made up your mind?”

“In this case, certainly not.”

“At any rate, I am going up by the nine-thirty. You had better share my brougham. Will it take you long to pack?”

“No; I can chuck my things together.”

Mrs. Hay struggled to retain her indifference.

“Very well, then, we will travel to London together, and then go to different hotels. Mine is the Coburg. I suppose yours will be the Carlton?”

“That will do as well as another,” said Billy, wishing to goodness he hadn't agreed.

Mrs. Hay opened the door.

“There will be some food in the boudoir in a few minutes. Perhaps you had better have some,” she said.

XVI

Viola's mind was made up. In the usual human manner, she had completely forgotten that her conduct had been the cause of all this unpleasantness. She never for a moment gave a thought to the fact that but for her behavior with Billy nothing would have happened. She never for a moment realized that Archie and Peg were only doing precisely the same things that she and Billy had done, four short days before. She only considered how she had been treated. All she could think about was what, in her mind, she called Archie's disloyalty. But she didn't blame her husband so much as she blamed Mrs. Hutton. If you had asked her the reason of this, she would have had no other argument to put forward than, “because she did.” A woman can always find excuses for a man, but she can never find a single one for a woman. And the fact that she may not be so much to blame as the man, only adds strength to her condemnation of the woman.

Revenge was the light that burned in front of Viola. She would be even with Peg, she said to herself, come what might. How dared she put her hands in her husband's and agree to his proposition? Any really nice woman would have refused at once, finally. How dared she take advantage of Archie's momentary weakness, and play with his sympathies as she had done? Beyond all, far beyond all, how dared she put up her hand and refuse to allow him to kiss her when he wanted to do so?

“Yes,” she said to herself, over and over again, “I will be even with Peg.” And so here she was, as kind-hearted, as charming, as well-bred a woman as one could wish to meet, making her preparation to institute proceedings which would divorce her from the one man in all the world whom she loved with her whole heart. Here she was, with a kind of fierce triumph, watching the packing of her trunks in order that, for the first time since their marriage, she might leave the husband she adored.

Of course, as you well know, revenge was not really the reason actuating Viola in her decision. It was that desire for martyrdom which is at the bottom of most of the utterly foolish things we men and women do in our little lives. It was what is colloquially known as spoiling one's face to spite one's nose—a foolish and a painful process, by which nothing is gained.

XVII

Left alone, Billy sat down in the nearest chair, and wished with all his heart that he had never been born. He didn't arrive at this conclusion quite at once. It was led up to by a number of wishes.

First of all, he wished he had never known Hay. They had been close friends since they were mutually eleven. He had looked upon Archie as one of the best. But he had behaved in a manner which had made it impossible for him to be classed among officers and gentlemen. Would any really decent chap spend hours alone in a punt with another man's wife?

Then he wished he had never met Viola. He owned to himself that she was very beautiful, with an extraordinary fascination, but it was impossible to get away from the fact that she had wilfully led him on. How was it possible for him to have kissed her if she had made up her mind not to allow him to do so? Flirtation with her meant nothing more, so far as he was concerned, he told himself, than a desire to kill time, pleasantly. Of course, his sense of the artistic had been appealed to by her beauty, but what harm was there in being an artist?

Then he wished that the Hays' expensive and complete bungalow had been at the bottom of the river; and then, with a feeling of dull anger and disgust, that he had never been persuaded by Viola to go up to London and help her to drag Peg—the best wife any man in this world ever had—through those horrible courts; finally, like all slightly fleshy men, with susceptible natures and self-indulgent characteristics, that he had never been born.

He had no time to arrive at any further conclusions before he heard Hay enter the room with a quick, light step.

The room was by this time quite dark. Hutton jumped up, breathing hard.

Hay touched the electric buttons, and stood facing him in a blaze of light.

XVIII

“Oh, you're back, then?” said Archie, looking immaculately cool in evening clothes.

“I regret being obliged to trespass on your hospitality—” began Billy.

“Not at all,” replied Hay. “Have a cigarette.”

Hutton glared at him. “No, thanks. I have only returned to pack my things, and take myself off.”

“Oh!” said Hay, lighting a cigarette. “Must you go?”

His imperturbability, his effrontery, as Billy inwardly called it, infuriated Hutton. He went up to Hay and stood in front of him, quivering with rage.

“I have known you pretty well for fifteen years,” he said, “but if any one had told me you were this kind of chap I should have knocked him down.”

“What kind of chap?” asked Hay, quietly.

Hutton's feelings of righteous indignation rose like a tidal wave. “The kind of chap,” he shouted, “who ruins a friend's home by taking away his wife.”

Hay blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke, and thoughtfully threw the ash of his cigarette into the grate. “It would interest me to know what you call that kind of chap.”

“I call him what every decent-minded man calls him—a detestable blackguard.”

“So do I,” replied Hay, looking straight into Hutton's angry eyes.

“And yet,” Hutton continued, at the top of his voice, “that's what you have deliberately done. Not content with ruining my home, you've smashed up the perfect relationship which existed between me and my wife, and driven her into the worst path a woman can ever enter.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Hay, with a faint smile. “How?”

“How? How? You appeal to her sentimentality, you take her out in a punt—a punt, mind you—morning, noon and night, you kiss her openly and you carry on like a love-sick calf on his honeymoon. That's how you've done it. And what's the consequence?”

“Tell me. I'm exceedingly interested.”

Hutton became almost eloquent. “You've broken your wife's heart, you've turned her into a hard, bitter woman. You've made me a sour, disappointed man, and you will be the cause of dragging my wife through the divorce-court. That's what you've done, and I call it low—low!”

Hay held himself in with a supreme effort of will. “Oh!” he said. “And so you call it low, do you?”

“Yes, I do!” cried Hutton, in a fever of indignation and moral rectitude. “And what the devil do you mean by it?”

Hay pitched his cigarette out of one of the windows, and leaned over the back of a chair toward Hutton. When he spoke there was an undercurrent of anger in his voice which made it tremble.

“What the devil did you mean by your behavior with my wife when you carried her away, day after day, and when you held her in your arms in the backwater a hundred yards from here?”

With an air of intense surprise, Hutton drew back a step. “Nothing,” he replied; “absolutely nothing. It was the merest flirtation. I often do it. You can't say that I've done anything.”

“I can tell you what you have just escaped doing. You have just escaped doing precisely those things which you accuse me of having done, and if you hadn't chanced to possess the truest, straightest, most loyal little woman in the world, the only woman I have ever known with a sense of humor, you would have landed all of us in that divorce-court you talk so much about, by the very thing you call a flirtation.”

“I—I—” Billy gasped.

Hay's voice broke a little. “It meant nothing to you—all this. You merely passed the time. But I am one of those miserable beggars who are cursed with the most horrible of all characteristics—jealousy, and this flirtation of yours was driving the blood into my brain, making the sun black and my whole life wretched.”

There was no longer any aggression about Billy. He was thoroughly and completely ashamed of himself. He had never before seen his old friend so deeply moved, or heard him make a confession of his feelings so frank, so whole-hearted. But he made one final attempt.

“And—and what about me?” he asked.

“What about you?” said Hay, lightly. “Find your wife, my dear chap, and ask her to explain the workings of the little game we've been playing.”

“Game?”

“Yes, man, game. We've been pretending to do exactly what you were doing in earnest.”

Billy was completely flabbergasted.

“Play-acting, do you mean?”

“Precisely.”

“But why?”

“To give you a chance of seeing how you liked the thing you made us endure.”

A sort of mist fell away from Billy's eyes. He clapped his hands on his knees, and broke into a roar of laughter.

“But you didn't calculate on being taken seriously, did you? Of course,” he added, with an inimitable touch of effrontery, “I knew all along, and I played up for all I was worth, just for the fun of the thing.... But what about your wife? Do you know what this play-acting of yours has driven her to?”

“What do you mean?” asked Hay, showing symptoms of alarm.

Hutton went off into irrepressible laughter. “Look in the hall—that's all I ask you to do.”

“What's the matter with the hall?”

“Bit by bit, all the luggage Vi has is being jabbed down in the hall to catch the nine-thirty to Paddington!”

“What?” gasped Hay.

“The biter fairly bit, by Jove! Splendid! Ho, ho, ho! Splendid!”

Hutton's laughter reverberated in the room, remained in the veranda and followed him across the lawn.

Hay waited a moment, afraid to look in the hall. Then, with a run, he crossed the room and flung back the door.

There, carefully labeled and strapped, reposed, impatiently, three dress trunks, three hat-boxes and a jewel-case. Upon each was painted the magic letters, “V. H.”

XIX

“Are you all alone, Archie?” asked Mrs. Billy, in her merriest voice.

She found Hay, profoundly moved, staring at the trunks.

“Vi's going,” he said. “'She's leaving me.”

Peg examined the labels, and saw that they were all addressed to the Coburg Hotel.

“Stuff and nonsense!” she said. “She's taking a leaf out of our book. She's pretending.”

“No; she is in earnest. Billy's just told me so.”

“Dear old Billy!”

“She's dressing to catch the nine-thirty to Paddington.”

“I don't believe it,” said Peg. “I'm prepared to bet you a nice new pipe that all these things are empty. Try them, and see for yourself. I'm going up for my cloak. I won't keep you a minute.”

But Hay didn't try them; he was afraid. He could see pretty plainly that the psychological moment had arrived. He realized with infinite relief and thankfulness that, as a factor in the affair, Billy no longer counted. There was no longer any reason for jealousy. But no one knew better than he that Vi seldom forgave people who wounded her vanity. They might spread false reports about her, they might criticize unfavorably the management of her ménage; she snapped her fingers at such things. Let them, however, tread on her self-conceit, and she became a tigress.

No woman so hated tricks played upon her as she. Practical-joking she held in abhorrence. Even chaff she could not tolerate. What would she say upon being told, as he was now bound to tell her, that he and Peg had been playing a huge trick? Even if she had not already made up her mind to leave him, this was more than enough to make her.

Curiously enough—or not curiously, when one remembers the contradictions of human nature—he couldn't help being glad that she was putting herself to so much trouble for his sake. It proved to him, quite conclusively, that she was jealous, and that, more than anything else, made him certain that she still loved him.

Then he tried to lift one of the trunks. He could just move it, and that was all.

Mrs. Billy had lost.

XX

Viola left her bedroom, and went quickly down-stairs. She stopped for a moment in the hall, and swiftly examined each label and each lock.

She passed straight to her desk, and wrote out her address for the servants. She heard some one moving in the room, and spoke without looking up.

“I don't think there is time for you to get anything to eat, now. The brougham is at the door. I think we had better go before they come down.”

“I am already down, Viola,” said Hay. “I hope in time.”

Viola wheeled round. “In time for what, pray?” she asked, her head in the air.

Hay spoke very gently. “In time to persuade you not to take this journey.”

“I fear,” replied his wife, bending again over the desk, “that even your remarkable powers of persuasion will fail in this case. The carriage is at the door.”

Hay rang the bell. “We will send the carriage away, I think.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I am anxious for a little talk with you, Viola, if you will spare me a few minutes.”

“I can give you two minutes,” she said, coldly.

“I regret that two minutes will be hardly enough.” He turned to Stanner. “Mrs. Hay will not require the brougham, after all.”

Stanner looked a hundred questions, bowed hurriedly and left the room.

Viola was furious. She flung down her pen, and let the lid of the desk fall with a bang.

“How dare you countermand my orders to the servants?”

“I beg your pardon,” replied Hay, “but there seemed no other way, for the moment, in which to persuade you to give me a few more minutes than two.”

Viola crossed the room to ring the bell, but Hay intercepted her with a quiet, quick movement.

“Ring the bell, I insist!” she cried.

Hay stood firm.

“You can catch a later train, if you wish to do so when you have heard what I have to say. It will make us both look a little foolish, if you give another order now.”

Mrs. Hay's hand fell to her side. “Then perhaps you will be good enough to tell Stanner to order the brougham for the ten-thirty.”

She sat on the settee, and tapped the floor angrily with her foot. The light from a carefully shaded electric lamp fell upon her face. Hay thought that he had never seen her looking more beautiful—or less likely to waver from her intention.

“I will order the carriage at any time you choose when you and I have finished our little talk,” he said.

“Many thanks,” she replied, deliberately turning her back upon him.

Hay went a little nearer. His manner was studiously quiet and self-controlled. He didn't allow a single tremor to show itself in his voice, or a sign of his extremely mixed feelings to appear on his face.

“Viola,” he asked, “will you please tell me where you intend going to-night?”

“Certainly. To the Coburg Hotel.”

“May I ask what your object is in leaving the bungalow?”

“As you will so soon know, I really don't see any reason why I shouldn't gratify your curiosity.”

“Thank you.”

“I am leaving you,” she said, a little wildly.

“So I imagined.”

“I am going to institute proceedings for a divorce.”

“Ah?”

“Mrs. Hay versus Mr. Hay and Mrs. Hutton.”

“I see.”

Viola was compelled to look at her husband. His total lack of astonishment or annoyance irritated her beyond words. “It doesn't seem to cause you the least surprise,' she said.

“Well, yes, it does,” replied Hay. “I know you to be a clever woman, and this shows such a wilful lack of knowledge of the law, on your part.”

“What do you mean by a knowledge of the law? I don't see that the law has got anything to do with it.”

“To a certain extent, it has,” said Hay, politely. “The law renders it impossible for you to be divorced from me.”

“What!” cried Viola. “After the way you have been behaving?”

“Certainly.”

“Day after day, alone, constantly kissing?”

“But never alone.”

“Never alone?”

“Never alone. You were always within sight, and generally within hearing.”

“How do you know?”

“We saw you.”

“You knew that I was following you about?”

“Always; otherwise, we shouldn't have pretended to make love.”

“Pretended to make love!” echoed Viola, scornfully.

Hay went nearer, and allowed a little feeling to creep into his voice. “We pretended, in the hope that you and Hutton might realize what kind of thing you had made us—Mrs. Billy and I—suffer.”

Viola left her chair, and stood facing her husband. “To dream that I could believe such a fairy-tale!” she cried. “Pretended to make love!... Why, in this very room....”

“If you had watched more carefully in this very room you would have seen how truly we were pretending.” And then his self-control broke down. He put out his hand appealingly, and his voice shook with tenderness. “Vi, in your heart you know that there is only one woman on God's earth for me!”

Viola waved his hand away. “And that woman is Mrs. William Hutton.”

“And that woman is my wife.”

Viola burst into a hysterical peal of laughter.

“Good heavens! you must think me an imbecile! After all I've gone through, after all I've seen and heard, to ask me to believe that you were pretending! Are we children, that we play these games?”

“It seemed to me,” said Hay, “that a far more dangerous game than pretending was on foot. It seemed to me that if you and Hutton——”

“That old story!” cried Viola. “Isn't it rather a mean thing to try and hide behind that?”

“Old story? Four days ago.”

“And in those four days, what have you done?” Viola felt that she was losing ground. She felt that all the time she had been laboring under a misapprehension, that all her suffering, all her sleepless nights, all her jangles with Billy, had been brought about by herself. None of this would have occurred if she had not done with Billy very much the same thing she was accusing her husband of doing with Peg. She wouldn't haul her flag down without an effort. So she lost her temper in the usual womanly manner in such circumstances.

“The indelicacy of it all,” she continued. “Before my very eyes! Thrusting your double life upon me! Forcing your wife to notice the violence of your love for your mistress!”

The blood flooded Hay's face.

“That's enough,” he said. “I will order your carriage for the ten-thirty.”

Before Viola could muster up courage and sink her pride sufficiently to say how sorry she was to have said such a horrible thing—a thing she didn't mean, and never for a moment believed, Hay had gone to the window, and Mrs. Billy was on the veranda.

“I can't find my old man,” whispered Peg. “What luck have you had?”

Hay raised his voice loudly enough for Viola to hear. It was shaking with temper.

“I regret to tell you, Mrs. Billy, that your kind help has been of no avail. The Hay-Hutton episode will reach its termination in the divorce-court.”

He went out into the darkness. The two women were face to face.

XXI

“Archie seems a trifle perturbed,” said Peg. “For the first time in his life his tie was crooked. I wonder if you can tell me what he meant?”

“Precisely what he said,” replied Viola, coldly.

Peg sat down, and held a bunch of roses to her nose. “Dear me! May one know more? Don't tell me that Archie is going to divorce you!”

“I'm afraid you don't quite understand the position of affairs,” said Viola.

“They seem very exciting. I should so like to know. I promise not to tell any one.”

Viola began putting on her gloves, paying great attention to the exact fit of each finger. “You will know quite soon enough. You are intimately connected with the case.”

“Connected with a divorce case!” cried Peg, with a gurgle of delight. “Oh, Viola, consider the opportunity for Paquin. I must go up to London and be photographed. All the illustrated papers will want my picture. People will think I am in the smart set. I shall become a notoriety. But do tell me where I come in.”

“You will occupy the unenviable position of co-respondent,” said Viola, contemptuously.

Peg broke into ripples of laughter. “How delicious! How excruciating!”

Viola surveyed her icily. “You're easily amused,” she said.

“Easily amused! My dear Viola, haven't you any idea how funny you are?”

Viola drew herself up, with an air of almost matronly dignity. “I am thankful to say that a sense of decency still remains to me,” she said.

Peg wiped her eyes, and watched Viola with intense amusement. “Although,” she asked, sweetly, “you had such a—well, hardly tepid affair with my Billy?”

The third finger of her left hand occupied Viola's whole attention. “It is not in my nature to joke at the annihilation of two houses,' she remarked, going off at a tangent.

“Oh,” said Peg. “I'm not laughing at that, believe me.”

“Indeed? If I had forgotten myself as you have I can hardly imagine giving way to such a disgusting exhibition of levity.”

“My dear Viola, do forgive me, but it's the most humorous suggestion I have ever heard. I—a co-respondent! It's unique! It's whimsical!'

“I trust you may find it so,” said Viola, primly. “It is positively odious to me to see a woman of your age treating her sins as though they were burrs stuck to her dress.”

“My sins? Oh, dear, it's not so much my sins that amuse me, as your absolute ignorance of our English divorce laws.”

“I fail to understand you.”

“Do tell me how you hope to get a divorce from Archie.”

“There will be no difficulty after what I have seen and heard.”

“And do you really think that your bare word will be sufficient?”

“There's your husband's testimony, as well.”

“Billy's testimony?” Peg exploded again. “Billy? Is Billy going to help you? Have you persuaded him to give me up?”

Viola rose. Her attitude and expression were those of a deeply injured woman, driven to extremities. “I have got his promise to give evidence against you—you perfectly disgraceful woman. How can you sit there laughing in that shameless, callous way when you well know that you have ruined two homes and spoiled the life of a man like Archie for the mere gratification of an overweening vanity? It—it paralyzes me, and yet I can hardly contain myself! To think that I—I should have been subjected to these indignities by you!”

“Yes, I see your point,” said Peg, quietly. “You never read your paper, do you?”

“No, thank heaven!”

“I quite agree with you; but if you did, you would see that although you may spend twelve thousand pounds in twelve days, engage twelve eminent K.C.'s, and wear twelve costumes to dazzle the eyes of twelve little men in a box, the judge will say to you, 'Nonsense, my dear Mrs. Archibald Hay; you've come to me with a mare's nest. You haven't a tittle of evidence! Go home and study the law.'”

Viola went close to Mrs. Billy's chair, and spoke with barely suppressed rage.

“Do you suppose that I am thinking merely of the result, Margaret Hutton? I have one desire only—to see you disgraced. A woman who is taken through the divorce-court never loses the stain, even though a thousand judges and jurymen can't agree. I will ruin you, whatever it costs me.”

Peg grew very serious. There was something so decisive, so bitter in Viola's tone that she was unable to do anything but realize that the situation she had worked so hard to render pleasant was far worse now than it had ever been.

“In your present mood,” she replied, “I believe you would, and I am rather ashamed of my laughter. I thought I knew you, after all these years. It is quite time, I see, that I tried to make you see things as they are, and not as you imagine them to be. To start with, Billy will never go with you to London.” Viola smiled. “At the moment, he is like nothing so much as a St. Bernard dog with his tail caught in the door. I have only to whistle, and the dear old thing will come leaping to heel. You can't have found him so strong-minded as to risk a cross-examination on this affair?”

Viola made an uneasy movement, and shifted her position.

“As to evidence,'” continued Peg, “which would justify counsel in letting you take the case into a court, how can you possess evidence of a thing that hasn't happened?”

“Hasn't happened?”

“Hasn't happened. Archie has kissed me only once.”

“In this very room, I saw——”

“You saw him kiss me once, two inches away from my ear.”

“I wonder how you will convince a jury of that?” asked Viola, with a sneer.

“A jury can generally be convinced in England,” said Peg.

“Well, you will have an opportunity soon of putting their credulity to the test.”

Peg crossed the room, and put her hand on Mrs. Hay's shoulder. “I hope not, Viola, for your sake. You and I have known each other for a long time, haven't we? All those years at school, and ever since, we've been very close friends. I see now how it is my fault that this danger threatens us both.”

“There!” cried Viola, “you own it.”

“My fault in allowing Billy to practise his usual methods with you.”

“Usual methods? What do you mean?”

“We have been married six years. You constitute his sixth flirtation.”

“I? Billy told me I was the only woman he had ever really loved.”

“For the seventh time,” said Peg, “he is capable of saying that as often as most men take tabloids. Billy cares for only one woman, my dear Viola; but Billy is a born flirt. It is the salt of life to him. Poor old Billy! And now that he finds a bunch of gray hair at his temples, he longs to prove to his own satisfaction that he is still capable of attracting. To make a beautiful woman believe that he loves her is, to Billy, as exciting as winning the Derby.”

Viola gave an exclamation of disbelief.

“Then, Viola, my dear, I know that flirting is the breath of your nostrils, too. You wanted to see if you couldn't, as usual, lay Billy low. Well, knowing this, and knowing you both, I saw no harm in allowing the affair which I knew would work out quite quickly and quite harmlessly, to go on; but I had not reckoned with Archie. He is quite another kind of temperament. For that reason, I was wrong not to pull Billy up. Archie has suffered intolerably. I feel grieved for him and ashamed of myself, for I could so easily have saved him from suffering by speaking a word to Billy at the outset. Archie has only one idea in his head—you. His whole life is you. You are his only thought, his only care, his only love.”

“I was,” said Viola, tearfully, “until you came and stole him away.”

“My dear,” said Peg, gently, “he doesn't care two straws for me.”

“What have you been doing, then?”

“We've been playing a little comedy; we've been acting the parts that you and Billy were playing so well, just to show you in what kind of light you both appeared to us.”

“That's the excuse Archie made. I don't believe it.”

“My dear Vi,” said Peg, “don't let us, whatever we do, turn our little comedy into a melodrama. It is this that I have tried to avoid all through. On my honor, I am telling the truth.”

Viola wavered. She struggled to maintain her anger, but it had died.

“I am to believe,” she asked, in a subdued voice, “that you and Archie have not been flirting, after all?”

“My dear,” said Peg, with a little laugh, “if you only knew how profoundly difficult I found it to persuade Archie even to pretend! Why, I had to coach him in whispers whenever you were present. Even as an amateur actor, he was not consistently good. He could never remember his cues, and all the time he was so afraid of hurting you.”

“Was he?” said Viola, softly.

“Yes. When you walked so many miles after us, it was, 'Poor darling, how she hates walking!' When I said, 'Archie, it's going well, she's jealous,' it was, 'Poor darling, isn't it horrible!'”

“Was it?” asked Viola, putting a finger on her cheek to arrest a too active tear.

“Think, my dear Vi, what I had to contend against. And yet, after all my energy, all my endeavors to act for the best, I've done no good.”

“How?” cried Viola, frightened.

“You've taken us so seriously that you are leaving Archie forever. I have only helped you to break his heart.”

Viola turned suddenly, and threw everything—pride, anger, humiliation, self-disgust—to the winds.

“Break his heart! Oh, Peg, do you think it would break his heart if I went away?”

Archie came into the room. Peg, with her eyes, commanded him to stay, and held out her arms to Viola.

“Oh, Peg, Peg, forgive me! I swear to you by all that's sacred in the world that I flirted with Billy only because I was miserable. Archie never tells me that he loves me now. I want to be told, I want to be told! I love him much more than I used to do, but he never says the things he used to say; he is always so reserved, and treats me as a wife, an institution. You can't think how I long to hear him say, 'I love you, I love you!'”

Without any prompting, Archie sprang forward and took his wife out of Peg's arms. “Vi, sweetheart, I love you, I love you!”

“Archie!”

“It has all been my fault; I was afraid to say how much I loved you. I thought it would bore you, or that you would laugh at me. But, oh, my dear, I've no words to tell you how I love you—how much you are to me. Every beat of my heart is for you.”

Peg made no secret of crying. She took out her handkerchief, and dabbed her cheeks vigorously. Through her tears there was a kind of laugh, and in her eyes an immense gladness.

“Of course this is too perfectly delightful,” she said, “and I should like nothing better than to cry like a baby on both your shoulders for a solid three-quarters of an hour, but I can see Billy's cigar coming up the garden, and it won't do for him to find me wet-eyed. He'll think I'm crying about him, and begin to buck.”

“Mrs. Billy,” began Archie, holding out his hand.

“Not now, Archie. I'm so happy that if you say anything now I shall be bound to cry my nose red, and how can a woman with a red nose give a curtain lecture to her husband?”

“I see,” said Hay, with a gay laugh. “Come, Vi, let's get out into the air; God's in His heaven!”

XXII

“He never tells me that he loves me!” sobbed Viola. “I want to be told! I want to be told!” And in this cry from a woman's heart lies one of the secrets of how to be less unhappy, though married.

Good women are made up of many curious ingredients. Mixed up with their faithfulness and obstinacy, their kind-heartedness and their desire for the moon, their courage in difficulties and their impatience under the crisscross matters of life, their power of self-sacrifice and their unbridled extravagance, there is always a never-to-be-satisfied desire, however commonplace they may be, for what is romantic. A woman likes to persuade herself that the man she has married looks upon her as the only woman in the world whom he could possibly have married, that he has eyes for no other woman, that she has been elevated by him to a position far above the heads of her sisters. Everything and everybody she meets persuades her to a contrary belief; her own observation convinces her that it is not so; her own intuition settles the question unalterably. Nevertheless, the desire remains, and the only way it can be partially satisfied is to be told daily, bi-daily, if possible hourly, by her husband, that he loves her, that he adores her, that she is an angel. He doesn't really convince her that he is speaking the truth, but reiteration comforts. Therefore, if a man knows this, it is not only wise of him, but it is his duty, to tell his wife these things as often as she desires to have them told.

There are cases where a husband can honestly and sincerely say that his wife is the one woman he loves in the world. Granted that he is a well-bred member of society whom his wife can respect and admire, then the marriage is one that has been made in heaven.

There are others where a man can very nearly be honest and sincere when he tells his wife the thing she so much desires to hear. That marriage is also made in heaven.

But there are the Lord knows how many others where a man cannot say with any honesty whatever any of the things which these other men can say, and if they could, they wouldn't. These are the marriages that are of the earth, earthy. They are disastrous, horrible, ignoble and were better ended.

A woman is like an instrument. Play the right notes at the right moment and the result is harmony. Play the wrong ones....

All this applies equally to the man.

After all, there is lots of room for silence in the grave.

XXIII

Billy's cigar came nearer and nearer, and then gleamed in the doorway.

Peg was sitting in the most comfortable chair, in the most comfortable attitude; her hands were crossed peacefully in her lap; she hummed a little song.

Billy walked slowly into the room with his eyes upon her, and stood in front of her.

“I'm back,” he said.

Peg looked up at him with a mild expression of surprise.

“Oh, good evening, Billy. Let me see, you've been in bed, haven't you? I hope you're better?”

“I don't think I shall ever be the same man again,” he replied, gloomily.

“Were you as bad as all that?”

There followed a short silence.

“I knew that you and Archie were only play-acting.”

Peg smothered a laugh. “Oh, you knew, did you?”

“Of course, I knew. I'm not a fool. Archie is an extremely good chap—one of the best, and all that, but, hang it, hardly the man you'd fancy in that kind of way.”

“Oh!”

Billy dropped the ash of his cigarette on the floor, and put his foot on it. “Oh, hang it, no; all the same, it was not a very sporting trick to play. It was horrible while it lasted. I found another white hair this morning!”

Peg hardly dared look at him. “I've always heard,” she said, quietly. “that too much bed is bad for the hair.”

“Oh, what rot! Er——”

He paused uncomfortably, and ran his fingers up and down the back of a chair.

“Yes?”

“I've made it all right between those two.”

Peg sat up. “Oh, you did that, did you?” she asked, interestedly.

“Course I did. I had to speak pretty straight to Archie.”

Peg gave way, and laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Oh, well,” added Billy, “it's all right now, anyhow. We won't quarrel as to who did it. I wish to goodness you'd stop laughing and humming silly songs like a disinterested bee. Why laugh?”

“It isn't a bit funny,” said Peg, almost exhausted, “is it?”

Billy flung away his cigar, and made a stride to Peg's chair. “I say, Peg, I want to tell you something. You won't chip me if I tell you?”

“My dear William! I am not a sculptor.”

He hesitated, looking, for once in his life, almost shy.

“Well, look here. I read in some book or other that at about thirty-five a man begins to lose whatever looks he had and the power of making pretty women interested in him.”

“Well?” encouraged Peg.

“Well, d'ye see, I thought I'd try.”

He suddenly went on his knees, and put his arms roughly round his wife.

“Peg, you little wretch, I adore you! I always have and I always shall. Don't you know that, darling old girl?”

Peg tightened her arms, and put her face silently up to his.

“Ha! ha! That's all right, then. Everything's comfortable again, and—and there's an end.”

“Yes, old man,” said Peg, with a laugh, “and a beginning.”