she watched the animation move feebly in his face, while he pulled at
his short fair moustache with a characteristic masculine gesture.
Physically, she admitted, he had never appeared to a better advantage in
her eyes.

"By the way, I had a game of billiards with Kemper and we talked pretty
late," he said, as if evolving the explanation for which she had not
asked. "He got back from Europe yesterday you know."

"He did?" Her indifferent gaiety played like harmless lightning around
his massive bulk. "Then we may presume, I suppose, on Madame Alta for
the opera season?"

He met the question with an admiring chuckle. "Do you really mean you
think he's been abroad with her all this time?"

"Well, what else did he get his divorce for?" she demanded, with the
utter disillusion of knowledge which she had found to be her most
effective pose.

Perry's chuckle swelled suddenly into a roar. "Good Lord, how women
talk!" he burst out. "Why, Arnold has been divorced ten years and he
never laid eyes on Jennie Alta till she sang over here three years ago.
There was nothing in it except that he liked to be seen with a
celebrity--most men do. But, my dear girl," he concluded in a kind of
awful reverence, "what a tongue you've got. It's a jolly good thing for
me that I'm your husband or you wouldn't leave me a blessed patch of
reputation to my back."

His humor held him convulsed for several minutes, during which interval