to the awful pitfalls of cross-examination. Anyone may forget
and recall facts later, but to state facts that may be used as evidence
is to stand handcuffed before inexorable justice, and Mrs. Wilder had
left her hands free.

"Is anything the matter?" Draycott jerked out the question as he got up
to leave the room. "You seem rather silent."

Clarice laughed, and her laugh was slightly forced.

"I went for a ride this morning, and met Mr. Hartley. He is the most
exhausting man I ever met."

"I hope you told him so," said Wilder shortly. "He's about here
frequently enough, even though he _does_ bore you."

Something in his voice made her eyes focus him very clearly and
distinctly.

"I have a very good mind to tell him," she said easily, "but he is
blessed with a skin that would turn the edge of any ordinary hatchet; he
would think I was merely being 'funny.'"

"It's an odd fact," said Draycott with a sneer in his eyes, "that
however much a woman complains of a man's stupidity, she will let him
hang about her, and make a grievance of it, until she sees fit to drop
him. When that moment arrives she can make him let go, and lower away
all right. Just now Hartley is hanging on quite perceptibly, and if it
entertains you to slang him behind his back, I suppose you will slang
him, but he won't drop off before you've done with him, Clarice, if I
know anything of your methods." Her face flushed and she began to look
angry. "Mind you, I don't object to Hartley. As you say, he's a fool, a
silly, trusting ass, the sort of man who is child's-play to a girl of
sixteen. If you must have a string of loafers to prove that your
attractions outwear _anno domini_, I must accept Hartley, and other
Hartleys, so long as you continue to play the same game. _Hartleys_, I
said, Clarice."

There was no doubt about the emphasis he laid upon the name.

"You flatter Mr. Hartley considerably," she said, but her voice was
conciliatory and her laugh nervous.

"He represents a type; a type that some married men may be thankful
continues to exist. God!" he broke out violently, "if he could hear you
talk of him, it would be a lesson to the fool, but he won't hear you. No
man ever does hear these things until the knowledge comes too late to be
of any use to him. You have got to have your strings"--he shrugged his
shoulders--"because your life isn't here, in this house; it is at the
Club, and at dinners and races and so on, and to be left to your