hey supplied her with a little income she
would know what to do with it, and would perhaps marry some man in her
own class able to take care of her.

Barbara's impulse was to cry out: "That's the most preposterous
suggestion I ever heard of in my life!" But she controlled this quite
reasonable prompting because another voice said to her: "This will
give you the opportunity to keep an eye on them. If he's not true in
his love for you--if there _is_ an infatuation on his part for this
common and vulgar creature--you'll be able to detect it." Jealousy
loving to suffer she was willing to inflict torture on herself for the
sake of catching him in disloyalty.

Expecting a storm, and bringing out what he considered his wise
proposals with great embarrassment, Allerton was surprised and pleased
at the sympathetic calm in which she received them.

"So that you'd suggest----?"

"Our keeping her on a while longer, and making friends with her. I'd
like it tremendously if you'd be a friend to her, because you could do
more for her than anyone."

"More than you?"

"Oh, I'd do my bit too," he assured her, innocently. "I could put her
up to a lot of things, seeing her every day as I should. But you're
the one I should really count on."

Because the words hurt her more than any she could utter; she said,
quietly: "I suppose you remember sometimes that after all she's your
wife."

He sprang to his feet. Knowing that he did at times remember it he
tried to deny it. "No, I don't. She's not. I don't admit it. I don't
acknowledge it. If you care anything about me, Barbe, you'll never say
that again."

He came and knelt beside her, taking her hands and kissing them.
Laying his head in her lap, he begged to be caressed, as if he had
been a dog.

Nevertheless by half past nine that evening he was at home, sitting by
the fireside with Letty, and beginning his special part in the great
experiment.

"She's not my wife," he kept repeating to himself poignantly, as
he walked up the Avenue from the Club; "she's not--she's _not_. But
she _is_ a poor child toward whom I've undertaken grave
responsibilities."

Because the responsibilities were grave, and she was a poor child, his
attitude toward her began to be paternal. It was the more freely
paternal because Barbe approved of what he was undertaking. Had she
disapproved he might have undertaken it all the same, but he couldn't
have done it with this whole-heartedness. He would have b