e--where Tyson was sitting now.
She said unspeakable things that were by no means pleasant for
Stanistreet to hear. It had required all his tact to break the news
of Tyson's marriage and take her home in a cab. He could see her now,
in her pitiful finery, sitting back, trying to hide her white face with
gloves that were anything but white.

But Tyson was not thinking of Mrs. Hathaway.

"I mean that baby--Molly--my wife. That was the wickedest, cruellest
thing I ever did in the whole course of my abominable life. I might have
known how it would end."

Stanistreet looked thoughtfully at his friend. He was used to these
outbursts of self-reproach, but they had never moved him greatly until
now.

"They told me I ought to have married a clever woman. _She_ wasn't
clever, thank God! Yet somehow she had a sort of originality--I don't
know what it was." (Tyson had lately fallen into the habit of talking
about his wife in the past tense, as if she were dead.) "It was something
that no clever woman ever has. _I_ know them! Upon my soul I do believe
I loved her." He paused, pondering. "I wonder how it would have answered
though if I'd married a thing with more brains?"

"Brains? They're damnation. Are you thinking of Miss Batchelor?"

"N-no. There _is_ a medium. A woman needn't be a fool or a philosopher,
nor yet a saint or a devil. It exists somewhere, that golden mean."

"Oh, no doubt."

"It's odd how that notion of the perfect woman sticks to you. How the
devil did I get hold of it, I wonder?"

Stanistreet made no answer. It was sufficiently evident that Tyson had
got it from his wife. The odd thing was that Tyson was unaware of this.
He seemed to have no doubt whatever that his marriage with the perfect
woman had been arranged for in heaven, though somehow it had failed to
come off on earth. A delusion not uncommon with men of Tyson's stamp.

"I believe," said Tyson, "it's a what d'ye call 'em--category--innate
idea--_a priori_ form of the masculine intelligence. I've never seen a
man yet who hadn't it somewhere about him. And I've seen most sorts.
Terrific bounders, too, some of them."

A year ago Stanistreet would have laughed at this, now he smiled.

Tyson lay back in his chair and fell into a waking dream. He spoke
slowly, in the curious muffled voice of the dreamer. "The perfect
woman--the eternal, incomprehensible divinity, all-wise, all-good,
all-loving, the guardian of the soul--I believe in it, I adore i