exact spirit of the occasion, and you know
it."

"Maybe I do, but what has that to do with your democracy?"

"I am democratic. I insist on it. I'm as democratic in spirit as
any woman. Only I see things as they are, and conform as much as
possible for comfort's sake, and so do you. Don't you throw rocks at
my glass house, Mister Master. Yours is so transparent I can see every
move you make inside."

"I'm democratic and you're not," he teased; but he approved
thoroughly of everything she did. She was, he sometimes fancied, a
better executive in her world than he was in his.

Drifting in this fashion, wining, dining, drinking the waters of
this curative spring and that, traveling in luxurious ease and taking
no physical exercise, finally altered his body from a vigorous,
quick-moving, well-balanced organism into one where plethora of
substance was clogging every essential function. His liver, kidneys,
spleen, pancreas--every organ, in fact--had been overtaxed
for some time to keep up the process of digestion and elimination. In
the past seven years he had become uncomfortably heavy. His kidneys
were weak, and so were the arteries of his brain. By dieting, proper
exercise, the right mental attitude, he might have lived to be eighty
or ninety. As a matter of fact, he was allowing himself to drift into
a physical state in which even a slight malady might prove dangerous.
The result was inevitable, and it came.

It so happened that he and Letty had gone to the North Cape on a
cruise with a party of friends. Lester, in order to attend to some
important business, decided to return to Chicago late in November; he
arranged to have his wife meet him in New York just before the
Christmas holidays. He wrote Watson to expect him, and engaged rooms
at the Auditorium, for he had sold the Chicago residence some two
years before and was now living permanently in New York.

One late November day, after having attended to a number of details
and cleared up his affairs very materially, Lester was seized with
what the doctor who was called to attend him described as a cold in
the intestines--a disturbance usually symptomatic of some other
weakness, either of the blood or of some organ. He suffered great
pain, and the usual remedies in that case were applied. There were
bandages of red flannel with a mustard dressing, and specifics were
also administered. He experienced some relief, but he was troubled
with a sense of impending disast