ephone and tell him that he was a fool. I felt old, although I
am only fifty-three, old and bitter, and tired.

With the fall of twilight, things changed somewhat. I was more passive.
Wretchedness encompassed me, but I was not wretched. There was violence
in the air, but I was not violent. And with a bath and my dinner clothes
I put away the horrors of the day.

My wife was better, but the cook had given notice.

"There has been quarreling among the servants all day," my wife said. "I
wish I could go and live on a desert island."

We have no children, and my wife, for lack of other interests, finds her
housekeeping an engrossing and serious matter. She is in the habit
of bringing her domestic difficulties to me when I reach home in the
evenings, a habit which sometimes renders me unjustly indignant. Most
unjustly, for she has borne with me for thirty years and is known
throughout the entire neighborhood as a perfect housekeeper. I can close
my eyes and find any desired article in my bedroom at any time.

We passed the Wellses' house on our way to Mrs. Dane's that night, and
my wife commented on the dark condition of the lower floor.

"Even if they are going out," she said, "it would add to the appearance
of the street to leave a light or two burning. But some people have no
public feeling."

I made no comment, I believe. The Wellses were a young couple, with
children, and had been known to observe that they considered the
neighborhood "stodgy." And we had retaliated, I regret to say, in kind,
but not with any real unkindness, by regarding them as interlopers. They
drove too many cars, and drove them too fast; they kept a governess and
didn't see enough of their children; and their English butler made our
neat maids look commonplace.

There is generally, in every old neighborhood, some one house on which
is fixed, so to speak, the community gaze, and in our case it was on
the Arthur Wellses'. It was a curious, not unfriendly staring, much
I daresay like that of the old robin who sees two young wild canaries
building near her.

We passed the house, and went on to Mrs. Dane's.

She had given us no inkling of what we were to have that night, and my
wife conjectured a conjurer! She gave me rather a triumphant smile when
we were received in the library and the doors into the drawing-room were
seen to be tightly closed.

We were early, as my wife is a punctual person, and soon after our
arrival Sperry came. Mrs. D