ing it to Mrs. Grainger for the relief of oppressed
working girls," he said.

Honora started.

"I wonder why Howard doesn't come she exclaimed, looking at the clock.

"Probably because he is holding nothing but full hands and flushes,"
hazarded Mr. Brent. "Might I propose myself for dinner?"

"When so many people are clamouring for you?" she asked.

"Even so," he said.

"I think I'll telephone to the Club," said Honora, and left the room.

It was some time before her husband responded to the call; and then he
explained that if Honora didn't object, he was going to a man's dinner
in a private room. The statement was not unusual.

"But, Howard," she said, "I--I wanted you particularly to-night."

"I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam. She told me you
were. Are you alone?"

"Mr. Brent is here. He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge.
They've gone."

"Oh, Brent will amuse you," he replied. "I didn't know you were going to
be home, and I've promised these men. I'll come back early."

She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, paused a moment, and went back to
the drawing-room. Brent looked up.

"Well," he said, "was I right?"

"You seem always to be right," Honora, sighed.

After dinner they sat in the screened part of the porch which Mrs. Fern
had arranged very cleverly as an outside room. Brent had put a rug over
Honora's knees, for the ocean breath that stirred the leaves was cold.
Across the darkness fragments of dance music drifted fitfully from the
Club, and died away; and at intervals, when the embers of his cigar
flared up, she caught sight of her companion's face.

She found him difficult to understand. There are certain rules of thumb
in every art, no doubt,--even in that most perilous one of lion-taming.
But here was a baffling, individual lion. She liked him best, she told
herself, when he purred platonically, but she could by no means be sure
that his subjection was complete. Sometimes he had scratched her in his
play. And however natural it is to desire a lion for one's friend, to be
eaten is both uncomfortable and inglorious.

"That's a remarkable husband of yours," he said at length.

"I shouldn't have said that you were a particularly good judge of
husbands," she retorted, after a moment of surprise.

He acknowledged with a laugh the justice of this observation.

"I stand corrected. He is by no means a remarkable husband. Permit me to
say he is a remarkable man."