drawing-room, and she had just asked her husband to smoke.

She was leaning back comfortably in a nest of cushions, in her very
latest gown, with a most becoming light falling on her from the tall,
yellow-shaded lamp.

He was facing her--astride his chair, in a position man has loved
since creation.

He was just thinking that his wife had never looked handsomer, finer,
in fact, in all her life--quite the satisfactory, all-round,
desirable sort of a woman a man's wife ought to be.

She was wondering if he would ever be any less attractive to all women
than he was now at forty-two--or any better able to resist his own
power.

As she put her coffee cup back on the tiny table at her elbow, he
leaned forward, and picked up a book which lay open on a chair near
him, and carelessly glanced at it.

"Schopenhauer," and he wrinkled his brows and glanced half whimsically
down the page. "I never can get used to a woman reading that
stuff--and in French, at that. If you took it up to perfect your
German there would be some sense in it."

Mrs. Shattuck did not reply. When a moment later, she did speak it was
to ignore his remark utterly, and ask:

"The _Kaiser Wilhelm_ got off in good season this morning--speaking of