inky-Dunk, I realized, would have to be told, and told at once. It
would, of course, be a shock to him. And it would be something more.
It would be a sudden crowding to some final issue of all those
possibilities which lay like spring-traps beneath the under-brush of
our indifference. I had no way of knowing what it was that had
attracted him to Lady Alicia. Beauty of face, of course, must have
been a factor in it. And that beauty was now gone. But love, according
to the Prophets and the Poets, overcometh all things. And in her very
helplessness, it was only too plain to me, his Cousin Allie might
appeal to him in a more personal and more perilous way. My Diddums
himself, of late, had appealed more to me in his weakness and his
unhappiness than in his earlier strength and triumph. There was a
time, in fact, when I had almost grown to hate his successes. And yet
he was my husband. He was _mine_. And it was a human enough instinct
to fight for what was one's own. But that wild-bird part of man known
as his will could never be caged and chained. If somewhere far off it
beheld beauty and nobility it must be free to wing its way where it
wished. The only bond that held it was the bond of free-giving and
goodness. And if it abjured such things as that, the sooner the flight
took place and the colors were shown, the better. If on the home-bough
beside him nested neither beauty nor nobility, it was only natural
that he should wander a-field for what I had failed to give him. And
now, in this final test, I must not altogether fail him. For once in
my life, I concluded, I had to be generous.

So I waited until Dinky-Dunk emerged. I waited, deep in thought, while
he splashed like a sea-lion in his bath, and called out to Struthers
almost gaily for his glass of orange-juice, and shaved, and opened and
closed drawers, and finished dressing and came out in his cool-looking
suit of cricketer's flannel, so immaculate and freshly-pressed that
one would never dream it had been bought in England and packed in
mothballs for four long years.

I heard him asking for the kiddies while I was still out in the
_patio_ putting the finishing touches to his breakfast-table, and his
grunt that was half a sigh when he learned that they'd been sent off
before he'd had a glimpse of them. And I could see him inhale a
lungful of the balmy morning air as he stood in the open doorway and
stared, not without approval, at me and the new-minted day.

"Why