ithout calling in outside assistance."

"Well, who can?" asked Tutt anxiously.

"Nobody," replied his partner with gravity, biting off the end of a
last year's stogy salvaged from the bottom of the letter basket. "Once a
man's married his troubles not only begin but never end."

"By the way," said Tutt, "speaking of this sort of thing, I see that
that Frenchman whom we referred to our Paris correspondent has just been
granted a divorce from his American wife."

"You mean the French diplomat who married the Yankee vaudeville artist
in China?"

"Yes," answered Tutt. "You recall they met in Shanghai and took a flying
trip to Mongolia, where they were married by a Belgian missionary. The
court held that the marriage was invalid, as the French statutes require
a native of that country marrying abroad to have the ceremony performed
either before a French diplomatic official or 'according to the usages
of the country in which the marriage is performed.'"

"Wasn't the Belgian missionary a diplomatic official?" asked Mr. Tutt.

"Evidently not sufficiently so," replied his partner. "Anyhow, in
Mongolia there are only two methods sanctified by tradition by which a
man may secure a wife--capture or purchase."

"Well, didn't our client capture the actress?"

"Only with her consent--which I assume would be collusion under the
French law," said Tutt. "And he certainly didn't buy her--though he
might have. It appears that in that happy land a wife costs from five
camels up; five camels for a flapper and so on up to thirty or forty
camels for an old widow, who invariably brings the highest quotation."

"In Mongolia age evidently ripens and mellows women as it does wine in
other countries," reflected Mr. Tutt.

"But you can buy some women for five pounds of rice," added Tutt. "Queer
country, isn't it?"

"Not at all!" declared his senior. "Even in America every man pays and
pays and pays for his wife--through the nose!"

Tutt grinned appreciatively.

"However that may be," he ventured, "a man who enters into a marriage
contract--"

"Marriage isn't a contract," interrupted Mr. Tutt.

"What is it?"

"It's a status--something entirely different--like slavery."

"It's like slavery all right!" agreed Tutt. "But we always speak of a
contract of marriage, don't we?"

"Quite inaccurately. The only contract in a marriage is what we commonly
refer to as the engagement; that is a real contract and is governed by
the laws of c