?"

It seemed harder than ever to say what she had to say in the face of
that distant, unemotional voice. But Marjorie had come to a resolve,
and went steadily on.

"I called up to say, Francis, that I am ready to go with you anywhere
you want to, at any time. I will try to be a good wife to you."

She clung to the telephone, her heart beating like a triphammer there
in the dark, waiting for his answer. It seemed a long time in coming.
When it did, it was furious.

"I don't want you to go with me anywhere, at any time. I don't want a
wife who has to try to be a good wife to me."

He hung up with an effect of flinging the receiver in her face.

Marjorie almost ran back to the davenport--she was beginning to feel as
if the davenport was the nearest she had to a mother--and flung herself
on it in a storm of angry tears. He was unjust. He was violent. She
didn't want a man like that--what on earth had she humiliated herself
that way for, anyway? What was the use of trying to be honorable and
good and fair and doing things for men, when they treated you like
that? Francis had proposed and proposed and proposed--she hadn't been
so awfully keen on marrying him. . . . It had just seemed like the
sort of thing it would be thrilling to do. Well, thank goodness he did
feel that way. She was better off without people like that, anyhow.
She would go back home to Westchester, and live a patient, meek,
virtuous life under Cousin Anna Stevenson's thumb, as she had before
she got the position at the office or got married. She certainly
couldn't go back to the office and explain it all to them. At least,
she wouldn't. It would be better, even if Cousin Anna did treat
everybody as if they were ten and very foolish. . . . And she had
refused the offer of a nice foursome and one of Lucille's cheerful
friends, to stay home and be treated this way!

She rose and went to the telephone again, with blazing cheeks.

She called up, on the chance, Logan's number; and amazingly got him.
And she invited him on the spot to come over the next evening and have
something in a chafing-dish with Lucille and herself. Lucille, she
knew, had no engagement for that evening, and could produce men,
always, out of thin air. Marjorie chose Logan because Francis had said
he didn't like him. She had been a little too much afraid, before
that, of Logan's literariness to dare call him up. But that night she
would have dared the Grand Cham