ack."

"Some husbands--"

"Yes, I know. But the men I play poker with are too much interested in
the draw to talk about other men's wives."

"It's the talk of the town the way you men play cards."

"Better the purse than the reputation."

"I haven't any doubt that you are doing your best to deplete both,"
coldly.

Then she sighed profoundly. This man was a great disappointment to
her. He did not understand her at all. The truth was, if she but knew
it, he understood her only too well. She had married the handsomest
man in town because all the other belles had been after him; he had
married money, after a fashion. Such mistakes are frequent rather than
singular these days. The two had nothing in common. It is strange that
persons never find this out till after the honeymoon. Truly, marriage
is a voyage of discovery for which there are no relief expeditions.

So Haldene went to the club, while his wife squared another sheet of
writing-paper and began again. Half an hour went by before she
completed her work with any degree of satisfaction. Even then she had
some doubts. She then took a pair of shears and snipped the crest from
the sheet and sealed it in a government envelope. Next she threw a
light wrap over her shoulders and stole down to the first letter-box,
where she deposited the trifle. The falling of the lid broke sharply
on the still night. She returned to the house, feeling that a great
responsibility had been shifted from hers to another's shoulders.
Indeed, she would have gone to any lengths to save Patty a life of
misery. And to think of that woman! To think of her assuming a
quasi-leadership in society, as if she were to the manner born! The
impudence of it all! Poor Mrs. Bennington, with her grey hairs; it
would break her heart when she found out (as Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene
determined she should) the sort of woman her son had married. She
straightened her shoulders and pressed her lips firmly and
contemplated a duty, painfully but rigorously performed. She cast the
scraps of paper into the grate and applied a match. It is not always
well that duty should leave any circumstantial evidence behind.

The evening papers devoted a good deal of space to the strike at the
Bennington shops. They frankly upheld Bennington. They admitted that
employers had some individual rights. They berated the men for
quarreling over a matter so trivial as the employment of a single
non-union man, who was, to say the most,