ot a frequent visitor. He had dropped in, he said, to get a
game of bridge, had tired of waiting for somebody to cut out, and had
been reading the newspapers to find out how the world was getting along.

"I haven't more than glanced at them in a week," he said, "but there's
nothing new, is there? Just new variations of public animosity and
domestic misfortunes. Have you read this Overman business?"

"I haven't."

"It's a case or a hard-working, thoroughly respectable man who, for no
reason that is known, suddenly shoots down his wife and children in
cold blood, and then blows his own head to smithereens."

"But of course there was a reason," I said; "he must have felt that he
was justified."

"He seems to have had enough money and good health. And he passed for
a sane, matter-of-fact sort of fellow."

"If it was the regular reason," I said, "jealousy, he wouldn't have
hurt the children."

"Only a very unhappy man could kill his children," said Fulton. "His
idea would be to save them from such unhappiness as he himself had
experienced. But in nine cases out of ten it would be a mistaken
kindness. Causes similar to those which drove the father into a
despair of unhappiness would in all probability affect the children
less. No two persons enjoy to the same degree, suffer to the same
degree or are tempted alike. How many wronged husbands are there who
swallow their trouble and endure to one who shoots?"

"Legions," I said. "Fortunately. Otherwise one could hardly sleep for
the popping of pistols."

"Do you believe that or do you say it to be amusing?"

"I think that the number of husbands who find out that they have been
wronged is only exceeded by the number who never even suspect it. But
they are not the husbands we know, the modern novelist to the contrary
notwithstanding. In our class it is the wives who are wronged as a
rule; in the lower classes, the husbands. I've known hundreds of what
the newspapers call society people; the women are good, with just
enough exceptions to prove the rule: the men aren't."

"When you say that the women are good, you mean they are technically
good?"

"Who is technically good?"

"Hallo, Harry!"

Colemain, having pushed a bell, pulled up a big chair and joined us.

"We were saying that the average woman we know is technically good."

"You bet she is!" said Colemain. "She has to be! If she wasn't how
could she ever put over the things she does put over?