e young man smiled, his chest expanded
with satisfaction, and grimly he said:

"Leave him to me."

Quite unconscious of the attention he attracted, the Italian turned to
Helen.

"You miss your husband very much?"

"Yes--terribly."

"It must be lonely for you."

"It is," she sighed.

"Yet you have your sister."

"Can a sister replace a husband?"

He gave a low, musical laugh.

"No--not a sister. A lover is preferable."

Quickly she retorted:

"My husband is my lover---my lover is my husband."

He laughed, as he said:

"It sounds very pretty, but you must admit that it is rather banal."

"In what way?"

He flecked the ash from his cigar.

"You are too pretty, too charming a woman to be commonplace. Really it
spoils you----"

Ignoring his compliments, she persisted.

"Do you mean I am commonplace because I call Kenneth my lover. What
other lover should I or any other woman happily married have? I am
faithful to him--he is loyal to me."

He gave a little mocking laugh, and was silent. How she hated him for
that laugh! After a pause he said quietly and suggestively:

"I am sure you are faithful to him----"

For a moment she looked at him without speaking, eager to resent the
implied imputation on her husband, yet unwilling to give the slanderer
the satisfaction of seeing that his thrust had carried home.
Concealing as best she could her growing irritation, she said calmly:

"Don't you suppose _he_ also is faithful to me?"

Again that horrible, cynical smile. Fixing her with his piercing dark
eyes, and, in a manner, the significance of which could not escape her,
he said:

"Don't seek to know too much, Madam. To paraphrase a famous saying:
'It's a wise woman who knows her own husband.'"

Coloring with anger, she said:

"You mean----"

"Just what I say--that a woman, a wife cannot possibly be sure of her
husband's fidelity. Think how different are the conditions. The wife,
no matter if her temperament be warm or cold, is always at home,
surrounded by prying eyes, rarely beset by temptation. The husband is
often away, he goes on business journeys that free him temporarily from
the chains which keep him in good behavior. If he is good looking, the
women look at him, flirt with him. It is inevitable. The chances are
that he succumbs to the first adventure--no matter how exemplary a
husband he may be at home. If he is a man--of unusual character, he
passes through the fire uns