Ah, it's certainly a good place for resting." Then, after a pause:
"You're married, I think you said."

Chip didn't remember having said so, and replied to that effect. The
stranger was unperturbed.

"No? But you are?" By way of pressing the question, he added, with a
glance at Chip through the moonlight: "Aren't you?"

"I've a wife and little boy in New York," Walker answered, soberly.

"Ah!" There was no emphasis on this exclamation. It signified merely
that a certain point in their mutual understanding had been reached. "A
happy marriage must be a great--safeguard."

The tone was of a man making a moral reflection calmly, but Chip was
startled again. It was his turn to stare through the moonlight, where
the length of the bench lay between them. He felt that he was being
challenged, but that he must not betray himself too soon. "Safeguard
against what, sir?"

There was a faint laugh, or what might have been a laugh had there been
amusement in it. "Against everything from which a married man needs
protection."

Chip would have dropped the subject but for that sense that a challenge
was being thrown him before which he could not back down. Nevertheless,
he determined to keep from committing himself as long as possible. "I'm
not sure that I know what you mean."

The stranger seemed to examine the burning end of his cigar. "Oh,
nothing but the obvious things--pursuing another man's wife, for
instance. A man who's happily married doesn't do that."

There was no aggression in the tone, and yet Chip felt a curious chill.
Who was this man, and what the devil was he driving at? It was all he
could do to answer coolly, knocking the ash off the end of his own
cigar: "And yet, I've known of such cases."

"Oh, so have I. But there was always a screw loose somewhere--I mean, a
screw loose in what we're assuming to be the happy marriages."

"Are there any happy marriages?--permanently happy, that is?"

The response was surprisingly direct: "That's what I hoped you'd be able
to tell _me_."

"Then you don't know, sir?"

Again the response was surprisingly direct: "I don't know, because I'm
not happily married." A second later he added: "But other people may
be."

So they were going to exchange secrets, after all. "But you _are_
married, sir?" To clear the air, he felt himself obliged to add:
"Happily or unhappily."

"I married a lady who had divorced her husband." In the silence that
followed it seemed to Chip tha