to self-indulgence
would now stop at nothing unless circumstances should prove too strong
for it.

It is not the gentle, faithful, self-sacrificing man who keeps his
wife's love; it never was. It was always the man who had in him a good
deal of the brute.

But, except in a moment of insanity, a man does not go against his
nature. Fulton has too good a brain not to think that if Lucy were
locked up for a week or so, and fed on bread and water, good might come
of it. But his was not the hand to turn the key in the lock. He could
no more have done it than he could have struck her. This sudden
failure of her love for him was only another evidence of that
wastefulness and extravagance which had so often hurt him financially.
Surely it must have occurred to him more than once to publish notices
in the newspapers to the effect that he would only be responsible for
his own debts. He must, I think, have threatened the thing from time
to time, knowing in his heart that he could never bring himself to put
it into execution.

I wonder how Fulton felt when hard upon the knowledge that she no
longer loved him, he received the bill for the dance which she had
given against his wishes, and in full knowledge of his present
financial predicament?

She had treated him so badly that it is a wonder of wonders that he
kept on loving her.

For one thing they deserve great credit. Even Evelyn Gray, a guest in
the house, did not know that there was any trouble between them. All
she thought was that owing to financial and other worries, which time
would right, Fulton seemed a little graver and less enthusiastic than
usual.

Nor was I any wiser. I had not, of course, so many chances of seeing
the two together, but I saw as much of Lucy as ever, for we rode
together nearly every day.

XII

If nothing more definite had come of all this, I should now see but
little significance in those long afternoons of riding with Lucy. She
could leave the substance of her trouble behind, as easily as she could
have left a pair of gloves, and she took into the saddle with her only
a shadow of the tragedy that was glowering upon her house.

I see now, that, at this time, we must have begun to talk more
seriously and upon more intimate topics; that we laughed less and that
there were longer silences between us. We began to take an interest in
the trees and flowers among which we rode, to learn their names, and to
linger longer over t