an lovely--that of rational acquiescence. On the faces of
most women such look is never seen.

'No, I am content. You are working hard, and I won't make it harder for
you.'

'Speak always like that!' Tarrant's face was radiant. 'That's the kind
of thing that binds man to woman, body and soul. With the memory of that
look and speech, would it be possible for me to slight you in my life
apart? It makes you my friend; and the word friend is better to my ear
than wife. A man's wife is more often than not his enemy. Harvey Munden
was telling me of a poor devil of an author who daren't be out after ten
at night because of the fool-fury waiting for him at home.'

Nancy laughed.

'I suppose she can't trust him.'

'And suppose she can't? What is the value of nominal fidelity, secured
by mutual degradation such as that? A rational woman would infinitely
rather have a husband who was often unfaithful to her than keep him
faithful by such means. Husband and wife should interfere with each
other not a jot more than two friends of the same sex living together.
If a man, under such circumstances, worried his friend's life out
by petty prying, he would get his head punched. A wife has no more
justification in worrying her husband with jealousies.'

'How if it were the wife that excited suspicion?' asked Nancy.

'Infidelity in a woman is much worse than in a man. If a man really
suspects his wife, he must leave her, that's all; then let her justify
herself if she can.'

Nancy cared little to discuss this point. In argument with any one else,
she would doubtless have maintained the equality of man and woman before
the moral law; but that would only have been in order to prove herself
modern-spirited. Tarrant's dictum did not revolt her.

'Friends are equals,' she said, after a little thought. 'But you don't
think me your equal, and you won't be satisfied with me unless I follow
your guidance.'

Tarrant laughed kindly.

'True, I am your superior in force of mind and force of body. Don't you
like to hear that? Doesn't it do you good--when you think of the maudlin
humbug generally talked by men to women? We can't afford to disguise
that truth. All the same, we are friends, because each has the other's
interest at heart, and each would be ashamed to doubt the other's
loyalty.'

The latter part of the evening they spent with Mary, in whom Tarrant
always found something new to admire. He regarded her as the most
wonderful pheno