penitentiary. "He means to do for me!" thought Channing, and
looked desperately around for help.

But there was no help. The woman he had acknowledged as his wife stood
in a corner of the room, her skirts drawn fastidiously about her,
looking on with unmistakable and fascinated interest. At the keyhole
_Madame la concierge_ also looked on, unobserved, breathing hard and
thinking better thoughts of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Channing, his chin cut, his nose swollen to twice its natural size,
undertook a series of masterly retreats. It was then that Madame, at the
keyhole, began to fear for her furniture, and considered interference.
Chairs were overturned, the table went crashing. At last a foot-stool
completed what Philip's fists had begun. Channing tripped over it, fell
heavily for the third time, and lay without moving.

His utter panic had saved him. Philip was tired of knocking him down,
and jerking him to his feet, and knocking him down again. He let him lie
this time, turned him over with a contemptuous foot, and put on his
coat.

"It was like punching a meal-bag!" he muttered, and strode out of the
room without a glance for either the woman in the corner, or the one he
surprised on the threshold.

Madame had been of two minds, as to whether to shriek for the
_gendarmes_, now that all was safely over, or to fling herself upon the
bosom of this gallant defender of his marital honor. But Philip was too
quick for her. She did neither.

Presently Channing opened a puffy and wary eye. "Gone?" he asked
faintly. "Then for God's sake why don't you get me something to stop
this infernal nose-bleed?"

His wife brought him a towel and a basin of cold water, and presented
them to him rather absently.

"Good Heavens, _what_ an experience! Why, the brute might have killed
me!--it runs in his family. Why didn't you go for help?"

"I was too interested," explained Mrs. Channing. "I've never seen a
clergyman fight before." She added, with an impartiality unusual in a
bride of several weeks, "You're not much of a man, are you, Percival
dear?"

Out in the street Philip strode along buoyantly, his clerical collar
somewhat awry, a black eye making itself rapidly apparent, indifferent
to the curious glances of the people who passed. Now and then he stood
still and laughed aloud, while Paris gazed at him indulgently, always
sympathetic with madness.

To think that he had imagined Jacqueline capable of leaving him for a
creat