er, nor so many whiskies afterward. I had
neither made a heavy killing at the races, nor met with disaster. If
the day differed from other days it was only in this, that I had
received the confidence of a little child and her mother; that this
confidence had touched my heart very nearly, and given me the wish to
be of use to those two, and if necessary to sacrifice my selfish self
for them. Feeling then that I was a better man than I had thought
myself, elated with that thought, and almost upon the brink of good
resolutions, I cut into a rubber of bridge, and began to drink
cocktails. Why, I shall never know. Let those who drink explain and
understand, each to himself, and let those who don't drink despise and
condemn, publicly, as is usual with them.

VI

I was feeling very sentimental by the time I got to bed. I had had a
long, and I suppose maudlin, talk with Harry Colemain on the beauties
of matrimony. We had maintained the Fultons against all comers, as our
ideal example of that institution.

"Just think," I said, "this very night is the first one that John has
been away from her since they were married. That's going some. That's
some record. He boarded the train like a man mounting the scaffold to
have his head chopped off."

I almost cried over the touching picture which I felt I had drawn.

"There aren't many couples like them," Harry agreed wistfully. "But I
bet even you and I had it in us to be decent and faithful if we'd ever
struck the right girl. Those things are the purest luck, and we've
been unlucky. But it makes me sick to be as old as we are, and no
nearer _home_ than the day we left college."

"When that baby was asleep in my lap--did I tell you about that?"

"Twice," said Harry mournfully.

I didn't believe him, and related the episode again. "It was
wonderful," I said; "she was like a little stove with a fire in it.
She made me feel so trusted and tender that I could have put back my
head and bawled like a wolf. Think of having babies like that for your
very own, and a wife like Lucy Fulton thrown in."

"She could have married most anybody," said Harry, "but she took a poor
man and a rank outsider because she--hic--loved him. That's the kind
of girl she is! Why nobody ever thought she'd settle to anybody. I
bet she broke her word to half a dozen men, before she gave it to
Fulton and kept it."

"I wouldn't call him exactly an outsider," I said; "anyway she's made