nd and telling her I'm married?"

As the afternoon wore on, he decided that it would be policy to ignore the
whole matter. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding all around, which
could not be cleared away by speech, unless Dorothy should ask him about
it--which he was very certain she would not do. "She ought to trust me,"
he said to himself, resentfully, forgetting the absolute openness of
thought and deed upon which a woman's trust is founded. "I'll read her the
book to-night," he thought, happily, "and that will please her."

But it was fated not to. After dinner, which was much the same as
luncheon, as far as conversation was concerned, Harlan invited Dorothy to
come into the library.

She followed him, obediently enough, and he closed the door.

"Dearest," he began, with a grin which was meant to be cheerful and was
merely ridiculous, "I've begun the book--I actually have! I've been
working on it all day. Just listen!"

Hurriedly possessing himself of the manuscript, he read it in an unnatural
voice, down to the flower-like hands.

"I don't see how you can say that, Harlan," interrupted Dorothy, coolly
critical; "I particularly noticed her hands and they're not nice at all.
They're red and rough and nearly the size of a policeman's."

"Whose hands?" demanded Harlan, in genuine astonishment.

"Why, Elaine's--Miss St. Clair's. If you're going to do a book about her,
you might at least try to make it truthful."

Mrs. Carr went out, closing the door carefully, but firmly. Then, for the
first time, the whole wretched situation dawned upon the young and
aspiring author.

VII

An Uninvited Guest

Dorothy sat alone in her room, facing the first heartache of her married
life. She repeatedly told herself that she was not jealous; that the
primitive, unlovely emotion was far beneath such as she. But if Harlan had
only told her, instead of leaving her to find out in this miserable way!
It had never entered her head that the clear-eyed, clean-minded boy whom
she had married, could have anything even remotely resembling a past, and
here it was in her own house! Moreover, it had inspired a book, and she
herself had been unable to get him to work at all.

Just why women should be concerned in regard to old loves has never been
wholly clear. One might as well fancy a clean slate, freshly and
elaborately dedicated to noble composition, being bothered by the addition
and subtraction which was once done upon it