being the perfect knight."

"Yes. I thought you were."

"That's good."

"But you're not!"

"No?"

"No!"

"Oh!"

Silence fell. Sam was feeling hurt and bewildered. He could not
understand her mood. He had come up expecting to be soothed and
comforted and she was like a petulant iceberg. Cynically, he recalled
some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on
one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white
mouse into chapel.

"Oh, woman, in our hours of ease,
Un-something, something, something, please.
When tiddly-umpty umpty brow,
A something something something thou!"

He had forgotten the exact words, but the gist of it had been that
Woman, however she might treat a man in times of prosperity, could be
relied on to rally round and do the right thing when he was in trouble.
How little the poet had known woman.

"Why not?" he said huffily.

She gave a little sob.

"I put you on a pedestal and I find you have feet of clay. You have
blurred the image which I formed of you. I can never think of you again
without picturing you as you stood in that saloon, stammering and
helpless...."

"Well, what can you do when your pianist runs out on you?"

"You could have done _something_!" The words she had spoken only
yesterday to Jane Hubbard came back to her. "I can't forgive a man for
looking ridiculous. Oh, what, what," she cried, "induced you to try to
give an imitation of Bert Williams?"

Sam started, stung to the quick.

"It wasn't Bert Williams. It was Frank Tinney!"

"Well, how was I to know?"

"I did my best," said Sam sullenly.

"That is the awful thought."

"I did it for your sake."

"I know. It gives me a horrible sense of guilt." She shuddered again.
Then suddenly, with the nervous quickness of a woman unstrung, thrust a
small black golliwog into his hand. "Take it!"

"What's this?"

"You bought it for me yesterday at the barber's shop. It is the only
present which you have given me. Take it back."

"I don't want it. I shouldn't know what to do with it."

"You must take it," she said in a low voice. "It is a symbol."

"A what?"

"A symbol of our broken love."

"I don't see how you make that out. It's a golliwog."

"I can never marry you now."

"What! Good heavens! Don't be absurd."

"I can't!"

"Oh, go on, have a dash at it," he said encouragingly, though his heart
was sinking.

She shook her head.

"No, I