e crepe waist, with a deep, boyish collar, drawn tightly
across her full, soft body.

"Isn't it fierce," she demanded cheerfully, "with Jim out as many nights
as he's in bed?" She produced a pasteboard package of popular
cigarettes and offered them to Howat Penny and Mariana. "Sorry, I can't
smoke any others," she explained, striking a match. "I heard you saying
he doesn't look right," she addressed Mariana. "And it's certainly the
truth. Who would with what he does? I tell him our life is all broke up.
One night stands used to get me, but they're a metropolitan run compared
with this. Honest to God," she told them good naturedly, "I've
threatened to leave him already. I'd rather see him a property man with
me on the road."

"It must be a little wearing," Mariana agreed; "but then, you know, your
husband is a steel man. This is his life." Howat Penny could see the
cordiality ebbing from the other woman's countenance. Positively,
Mariana ought to be ... "I can get that," Harriet Polder informed her.
"We are only hanging on till Jim's made superintendent. Then we'll be
regular inhabitants. Any other small thing?" At the sharpening note of
her voice James Polder hurriedly proceeded with general facts. "You'll
want to see the Works, as much as I can show you. Hardly any of the
public are let through now. It will interest you, sir, to see what the
Penny iron trade has become. I can take you down this afternoon. Harriet
will find us some lunch." The latter moved in a sensuous deliberation,
followed by a thin, acidulous trail of smoke, into inner rooms. "When do
you have to go back?" Polder asked.

"This evening," Howat told him; "we just stopped to--"

"To see how you were," Mariana interrupted him baldly, studying the
younger man with a concerned frown. "You ought to rest, you know," she
decided. "That's possible," he returned. "I thought of asking for a
couple of weeks. I hurried back right after I was married. They are
coming to me." She enigmatically regarded Howat Penny; he saw that she
was about to speak impetuously; but, to his great relief, she stopped.
"It's been pretty hard on Harriet," he said instead. "After the stage
and audiences, and all that." Mariana's expression was cold. Confound
her, why didn't she help the fellow! Howat Penny fidgeted with his
stick. What a stew Polder had gotten himself into. This was worse, even,
than the marriage threatened.

Lunch was a spasmodic affair of cutlets hardening in gr