overing blue
pencil, conveyed the impression of a perfect balance between heart and
head, sensibility and reason, theory and its opposite.

"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you understand,
of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on taking?"

If they didn't get on! Shelton smiled. Mr. Paramor did not smile, and
again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against something poised
but firm. He remarked irritably:

"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having it."

This time his uncle smiled. It was difficult for Shelton to feel angry
at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too impersonal
to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.

"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned. We 're bound to look
at every case, you know, old boy."

The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
strong in Shelton. He was not one of those who could not face the notion
of transferred affections--at a safe distance.

"All right, Uncle Ted," said he. For one mad moment he was attacked by
the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce. Would it not be common
chivalry to make her independent, able to change her affections if she
wished, unhampered by monetary troubles? You only needed to take out the
words "during coverture."

Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face. There was no meanness
there, but neither was there encouragement in that comprehensive brow
with its wide sweep of hair. "Quixotism," it seemed to say, "has merits,
but--" The room, too, with its wide horizon and tall windows, looking as
if it dealt habitually in common-sense, discouraged him. Innumerable men
of breeding and the soundest principles must have bought their wives in
here. It was perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf. The
aroma of Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.

"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going to
be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.

Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
glass, and sniffed at it. "Will you come with me as far as Pall Mall? I
'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I suppose?"

They walked into the Strand.

"Have you seen this new pl