Of course my meeting's simply
nothing. I ought to have been glad about the Kit Kats, and I am."

Some men, after that, would possibly have changed their minds and taken
her to her dear meeting; but to Hubert nothing came before success.

"That's a dear unselfish little wife," he answered soothingly and gave
her a forgiving kiss. The episode was closed.

"You're sure it is the twenty-ninth of this month?" she therefore
angered him by asking. Helena could not believe in Fate being so
brutal.

"Well, there's the card," he answered brusquely.

She took it up, filled with an abrupt, unchristian desire to tear it
into fragments. It had a silly black cat in silhouette upon it and she
_had_ thought he would come at last....

"Why Klub with a K?" she did allow herself to ask.

"Just a literary conceit, I suppose," he answered, trying to control
his voice; and that silenced her, because she had no theories as to
what a literary conceit might be.

But Hubert could not quite allow the matter to rest there. He felt
that she was thinking he had acted selfishly and he must prove to her
that everything would be all right. What odd disguises can Remorse
assume!

"You can get Alison to take you," he threw out. "He's sure to be
going."

"Oh no," answered Helena. "I told him you were coming. He'll be
booked. No, I shan't go at all."

Face Mrs. Boyd exultant? No, not she. Afterwards, if needed, some
excuse. But anyhow not that! She had said she was bringing Hubert.

"That's silly, my dear." He did not often call her that. "Alison will
take you gladly, I know, or if not you can go alone. You often have
before."

"Yes," she retorted, "but not when I've told every one that you were
taking me. I have a little pride."

He shut his paper and got up. He never could bear scenes.

"Just as you like," he said, trying to speak evenly. "It's your
concern. I was only thinking of your comfort. Whatever you do won't
hurt _me_."

* * * * *

A man can escape everything except himself; and so it chanced that
Hubert Brett felt a brute twice, repented twice, about one causerie.

He felt it most acutely in his little room.

He very nearly went back to her now, a second time, and said so; but
then he remembered what a nasty scene it had been, about nothing. Of
course in the old anti-marriage days it had been his pet theory that
every wedded pair inevitably--by force of Nature, which meant