's all right, Mrs. Biggs. Nine o'clock
to-morrow."

"Yes'm."

So that was why Jerry was under a dark cloud. He resented the secret
about the room in the tenement.

"Jerrykins, I wonder if thy great-great-great-granddaughter will be able
really to call her soul her own. Jerry could have a whole series of
workshops, of which I knew nothing, and consider it his business only;
but if my soul has one unexplored corner--my body one unexplained
resting place--I am no true wife! The times, my son, are _always_ out of
joint," she added with a sigh.

Jerry stayed away all day and telephoned he would spend the night at the
club. He came in the next morning just in time for his model, to find
Jane coming in, too.

"Good-morning, Jerry," she said cheerfully.

"Good-morning."

"Hope you had a pleasant party."

"I did not."

She went upstairs and he into the studio. But at luncheon she
precipitated the storm.

"Mrs. Biggs says you asked her if I had a key to her flat?"

"I did," defensively.

"Why not ask me, Jerry?"

"You were off with Christiansen!"

"But I came back in half an hour. Your impatience might have kept until
then."

"May I ask why you find it necessary to rent a room in that tenement
house?"

"Am I on the witness stand, Jerry, or is this a friendly interest in my
doings?"

"I have a right to know why you have such a room."

"What right?"

"The right of your husband!"

"I don't know the sources of that right, Jerry, but I question it. The
rights of a husband and wife, it seems to me, must be agreed on between
them. I have never demanded an accounting of your time, or where you
spend it."

"That's a different matter. A husband has his honour to look out for."

"Honour is the common possession of the husband and the wife, as I see
it, Jerry. She looks after it, just as he does."

"When a woman keeps a room and receives her lover there, it's time her
husband looked into it."

Jane's face seemed to contract with the control she put on herself.

"You must explain that, Jerry."

"I saw Christiansen go there this morning to meet you."

"Jerry, you were spying?"

"It's my business to know, I tell you. Christiansen has given himself
airs around here long enough. He can't make love to you...."

To his utter silencing, Jane laughed. Not bitterly or angrily, but just
amusedly.

"Jerry, if it were not so ridiculous, it would be insulting! The idea of
Martin Christiansen loving me is so absu