lly. But I
refrained. I had never been able to make Carlotta understand me or my
ideas, and I had long been weary of the resentful silences or angry
tirades which mental and temperamental misunderstandings produce.

"Courage never gets into a man unless it's born there," said I. "Folly
is born into us all and can be weeded out."

"What can be expected?" she went on after trying in vain to connect my
remark with our conversation. "A boy needs a father. You've been so busy
with your infamous politics that you've given him scarcely a thought."

Painfully true, throughout; but it was one of those criticisms we can
hardly endure even when we make it upon ourselves. I was silent.

"I've no patience with men!" she went on. "They're always meddling with
things that would get along better without them, and letting their own
patch run to weeds."

Unanswerable. I held my peace.

"What are you going to do about it, Harvey? How _can_ you be so calm?
Isn't there _anything_ that would rouse you?"

"I'm too busy thinking what to do to waste any energy in blowing off
steam," was my answer in my conciliatory tone.

"But there's nothing we _can_ do," she retorted, with increasing anger,
which vented itself toward me because the true culprit, fate, was not
within reach.

"Precisely," I agreed. "Nothing."

"That creature won't let him come to see me."

"And you musn't see him when he sends for you," said I. "He'll come as
soon as his money gives out. She'll see that he does."

"But you aren't going to cut him off!"

"Just that," said I.

A long silence, then I added in answer to her expression: "And _you_
must not let him have a cent, either."

In a gust of anger, probably at my having read her thoughts, she blurted
out: "One would think it was _your_ money."

I had seen that thought in her eyes, had watched her hold it back behind
her set teeth, many times in our married years. And I now thanked my
stars I had had the prudence to get ready for the inevitable moment when
she would speak it. But at the same time I could not restrain a flush of
shame. "It _is_ my money," I forced myself to say. "Ask your brother.
He'll tell you what I've forbidden him to tell before--that I have twice
rescued you and him from bankruptcy."

"With our own money," she retorted, hating herself for saying it, but
goaded on by a devil that lived in her temper and had got control many a
time, though never before when I happened to be the one wit