oor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another
dinner gown."

"You've ordered another dinner gown!"

"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind. But if you're
poor--"

She had made a discovery--to reflect upon his business success was to
touch a sensitive nerve.

"I'm not poor," he declared. "But the bottom's dropped out of the market,
and even old Wing is economizing. We'll have to put on the brakes for
awhile, Honora."

It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three
visits to St. Louis.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW DOCTRINE

This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine
--spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented
with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast
finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark
well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess,
not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize
a significance in the choice of her sex. And--another discovery!--she is
not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French,
clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are
neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths--for she is
a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is
worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette,
and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she
were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they
understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not
to bring peace, but a sword.

At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their
fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband
seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his
"den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his
dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a
cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.

"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so
untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're
getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the
top of his head, "is a bald spot!"

"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.

"Lot