of outside interests fell on Scott Brenton's shoulders
until, perforce, they straightened up to bear the burden. And the
straightening was by no means wholly theoretical. It was an infinitely
saner, sounder Brenton who faced his classes on the first morning of
the new semester, than any one, watching him throughout the previous
year, would have ever dared to hope.

And Doctor Keltridge, who had watched him rather hopelessly, gave great
thanks accordingly.

"You've proved the wisdom of your change, Brenton," he remarked, one
day.

"How is that?"

"The whole look of you. You aren't the same man you were, five months
ago. Mentally and physically, you're sleeker."

Brenton laughed.

"Is that a sign of wisdom?"

The doctor met the question with composure.

"As a general thing, yes. The normal being is sleek by nature. It's
only when he cramps himself that he gets wrinkled. Cramps himself, I
say. Cramping from an outside source never has much effect upon him,
unless he chooses to have it. No; that's not Christian Science; it's
mere common sense. As a rule, the two things are incompatible. By the
way, I hear that your ex-curate has been tackling your wife."

"No!"

"A fact. The boy told me. She started out to tackle him, and he
clinched with her. I must say it was plucky of him, even if it didn't
appear to do much good."

Brenton's gray eyes clouded.

"The only question is: what is good," he said thoughtfully.

"No question about it," the doctor blustered. "The only chance the
idiot woman has--"

Brenton interrupted.

"She is my wife," he reminded the doctor.

"I don't care if she is your wife, twenty times over," Doctor Keltridge
said vehemently. "We both know the infernal thing that she has done."

"But, if she believed it was right--" Brenton was beginning faintly.

The doctor bore him down.

"Because she is a semi-maniac, she's not to be encouraged in her
destruction of the human race," he argued hotly. Then, as he saw the
tightening and the whitening of Brenton's lips, he forgot his argument
in swift contrition. "Damn it all, Brenton! I vowed I'd never mention
the thing to you again, as long as I lived, and here I am again, off on
the same old subject. I'm a garrulous old man; but----" his keen face
softened, puckered into a score of wrinkles; "but I loved that baby
boy. I brought him into the world, and I had spent no small amount of
time congratulating myself upon the fact that you'd got him, a