he sank into a chair, flinging his collar in
one direction and his necktie in another. "I'd rather be in the city
in August than in these first warm days of spring. What do you say
to moving into the country for the summer? Our month is up here the
first, anyway, and I am perfectly willing to lose any part of the
month's rent if we only can get away."

"But, Dicky," I protested, "unless we board, which I don't think
any of us would like to do, how are we going to find a house, to say
nothing of getting settled in so short a time?"

To my surprise, Dicky hesitated a moment before answering. Then,
flushing, he uttered the words which brought my little castle of
contentment grumbling about me and warned me that my marital problems
were not yet all solved.

"Why, you see, there won't be any bother about a house. Miss Draper
has found a perfectly bully place not far from her sister's home."

"Miss Draper has found a house for us!"

I echoed Dicky's words in blank astonishment. His bit of news was
so unexpected, amazement was the only feeling that came to me for a
moment or two.

"Well, what's the reason for the awful astonishment?" demanded Dicky,
truculently. "You look as if a bomb had exploded in your vicinity."

He expressed my feeling exactly. I knew that Miss Draper had become a
fixture in his studio, acting as his secretary as well as his model,
and pursuing her art studies under his direction. But his references
to her were always so casual and indifferent that for months I had not
thought of her at all. And now I found that Dicky had progressed to
such a degree of intimacy with her that he not only wished to move to
the village which she called home, but had allowed her to select the
house in which we were to live.

I might be foolish, overwrought, but all at once I recognized in
Dicky's beautiful protege a distinct menace to my marital happiness.
I knew I ought to be most guarded in my reply to my husband, but I am
afraid the words of my answer were tipped with the venom of my feeling
toward the girl.

"I admit I am astonished," I replied coldly. "You see, I did not know
it was the custom in your circle for an artist's model to select a
house for his wife and mother. You must give me time to adjust myself
to such a bizarre state of things."

I was so furious myself that I did not realize how much my answer
would irritate Dicky. He sprang to his feet with an oath and turned on
me the old, black angry loo