the subject!"

"That is brutal. I never thought--" She forced a smile and drew her
glass toward her. The straw-tinted wine slopped over and frothed on the
white skin of her arm.

"Well," she breathed, "this ghastly dinner is nearly ended."

He nodded pleasantly.

"And--Phil?"--a bit tremulous.

"What?"

"Was it all my fault? I mean in the beginning? I've wanted to ask you
that--to know your view of it. Was it?"

"No. It was mine, most of it."

"Not all--not half! We did not know how; that is the wretched
explanation of it all."

"And we could never have learned; that's the rest of the answer. But the
fault is not there."

"I know; 'better to bear the ills we have.'"

"Yes; more respectable to bear them. Let us drop this in decency's name,
Alixe!"

After a silence, she began: "One more thing--I must know it; and I am
going to ask you--if I may. Shall I?"

He smiled cordially, and she laughed as though confiding a delightful
bit of news to him:

"Do you regard me as sufficiently important to dislike me?"

"I do not--dislike you."

"Is it stronger than dislike, Phil?"

"Y-es."

"Contempt?"

"No."

"What is it?"

"It is that--I have not yet--become--reconciled."

"To my--folly?"

"To mine."

She strove to laugh lightly, and failing, raised her glass to her lips
again.

"Now you know," he said, pitching his tones still lower. "I am glad
after all that we have had this plain understanding. I have never felt
unkindly toward you. I can't. What you did I might have prevented had I
known enough; but I cannot help it now; nor can you if you would."

"If I would," she repeated gaily--for the people opposite were staring.

"We are done for," he said, nodding carelessly to a servant to refill
his glass; "and I abide by conditions because I choose to; not," he
added contemptuously, "because a complacent law has tethered you to--to
the thing that has crawled up on your knees to have its ears rubbed."

The level insult to her husband stunned her; she sat there, upright, the
white smile stamped on her stiffened lips, fingers tightening about the
stem of her wine-glass.

He began to toss bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself
in an ugly way. "_I_ wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at
_him_!--Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp.
Little girl--oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?--for you
have done nothing to me, child, that can match it in sh