fering of conciliation.
And we have lived happily. But things have never been with us quite as
they were. I have never known if your mother really got to loving me
again, or if she has raised a great monument of simulation and devotion
upon a pedestal of shame and remorse. Even now, if I drink a little
more than is good for me, she never criticizes. She feels that she has
forfeited that prerogative."

"What became of the man?"

"He died of heart failure," said my father, "in a disreputable place.
They tried to hush it up, but the facts came out. When I heard of it,
I plumped right down in a chair and laughed till I was almost sick. I
knew what he was," he said with sudden savageness, "all along. But
there is no making a woman believe what she doesn't want to believe.
He was fascinating to women, and a cur. He kept his compact with me,
not because of his given word, but because he was physically afraid of
me."

"Thank you for telling me all this, father," I said; "I like you better
and better. But in one way the cases aren't parallel. In Lucy's case
there is no other man."

"Not yet," said my father; "but when a woman no longer loves her
husband, look out for her. She has become a huntress--she is a lovely
sloop-of-war that has cleared her decks for action. . . . Are you
ready?"

I slipped my arm through my father's and we went downstairs together.

"I'm sorry you're mixed up in this," he said; "but you couldn't go when
she made a point of your staying. I'm obliged to you for telling me."

XIV

It grew very warm during the evening and windy. By bedtime there was a
hot, lifeless gale blowing from the southeast. Now and then the moon
shone out brightly through the smother of tearing clouds, and was
visible for a moment in all her glory, only to be submerged the next
moment and blotted out. About two o'clock single raindrops began to
splash so loudly on the veranda roof just outside my window that the
noise waked me; after that I only slept fitfully, and my ears were
never free from the loud roaring of the tropic rain that began
presently to fall upon Aiken. I dreamed that somebody had stolen the
Great Lakes and while being hotly pursued had dropped them. All day it
rained like that, and all the following night, and only let up a little
the afternoon of the second day. I got into an oilskin then and walked
out to the Fultons'.

Theirs was a nervous household. Jock and Hurry confined ind