good-lookin' or not. Sometimes I'm discouraged. An artist husband is so
hard to please."

"I didn't use to be, dovey," he replied, with a mischievous gleam.

"He means when he took me. I'm used to his slurs. Just think, Alice, I
accepted this man fresh from Paris, with all his sins of omission and
commission upon him, and now he reviles me to my teeth." She patted the
hand he slipped round her neck. "Tell us more about Mrs. Haney. How was
she dressed?"

"In perfect good taste--almost too good. She looked like one of Joe
Meyer's early posters. Gee! but she was snappy in drawing. She carries
that sort of thing well--she's so clean and nifty in line. If she could
have a year in Paris--wow!--well, us to Fifth Avenue, sure thing!"

"All depends on what is at the bottom of that girl's soul," retorted
Lee, sententiously. "A light woman with money is a flighty combination.
I don't pretend to say what your little Mrs. Haney is at bottom. Thus
far I like her. I talk about her freely, but I defend her in public.
But, at the same time, fifty thousand dollars a year is a corrupting
power."

Congdon gravely assented to this. "You're perfectly right; that's the
reason I keep our income down to fifteen hundred. I'd hate to see you
look like a ready-made cloak advertisement."

Alice rose rather wearily. "Thursday night, you said?"

"Yes; and I guess, following the latest bulletin concerning Mr. Haney,
we better put on our swellest ginghams."

Alice, on her way home, continued to think of Mrs. Haney; indeed, she
was seldom out of her mind. And she had a feeling of having known her
for a long time--since girlhood; and yet less than a year had passed
since that dinner at Lee Congdon's. Spring was coming; the hint of it
was in the sweet air, and in the clear piping of a prairie lark in a
vacant lot. Spring! And how long it had been since Ben had referred to
their marriage! Perhaps he took it for granted. "Perhaps he sees in me
only failing health, and dares not speak."

She was not gaining; that she knew, and so did Lee. She had stayed too
long in the raw climate of her native city. "He must not marry me!" she
despairingly cried. "I must not let him ruin his life in that way!" And
she sank back in the corner of her carriage with wrinkled, pallid face,
and quivering lips; for Bertha was passing up the avenue, driving a
smart-stepping cob, in her cart, and in the seat beside her, as radiant
as herself, sat Ben Fordyce.

CHAP