at too. Where is he supposed to be just now?"

"Lord? Jimmy said he was up-state visiting Gottschalk, the millionaire
who is backing the Aerial Mail Company."

Nobody spoke for a minute or two. At length my friend rose and pushed
his chair up against the table.

"Ah, well," he said, looking for his pipe, "we can't sit here chewing
the rag all day."

I was sitting at my desk, biting my pen and staring absently at the
whitey-brown vista of the garden with the cold blue ridge of the Orange
Mountains showing through the delicate tracery of the wind-swept trees,
when I heard Bill moving about the room behind me.

"You're not working," she observed perfunctorily. I nodded assent. I
often wonder, to tell the truth, when I _do_ work. Even when no one is
by to tell me of it, I seem to spend most of my time in idleness.

"I was thinking," I said. Perhaps I was. She came up to my chair and
looked out too.

"About--you know--last night?" she asked.

"Yes, I was thinking you, being a woman, would know better than I
whether there is a storm brewing."

She was silent, merely looking out at the wintry landscape.

"I feel," I went on, "that being a rather dried-up old bachelor puts me
at a disadvantage. What can I know of such a situation as we imagine? I,
who jog along from day to day, a journeyman scribbler! What knowledge or
experience have I of the heights and depths of passion? What can Peeping
Tom know about it?"

"Don't!" she said. "We're all Peeping Toms, as far as that goes. I'm
sure," she went on, "it's very difficult to guess what's in the mind of
a woman like her. She's very handsome, you know. She's one of those
women who are rather puny and pathetic in their 'teens, with appealing
eyes, but who grow big and healthy later. Marriage does wonders for
them."

"If the marriage is happy," I remarked casually. The silence that
followed was so long that I twisted round in my chair. There was an odd
expression on my friend's face, a commingling of wisdom, pity and
reminiscence.

"What have I said?" I asked.

"No marriage is happy," she said gravely.

"Yes!" I responded.

"Not in the sense you understand the term. That's what we mean when we
say you don't know anything about it. Marriage suits some men and women
more than others, but that isn't to say the people it suits are any the
happier. In fact, it's often the other way. They're frightfully unhappy
at times. Very few married women haven't been on the point