e acute indigestion, Dick."

"Perhaps there is a cog loose in his brain so that his wheels do not
work together," added Ellery.

"At any rate, cynicism is self-confessed failure; so don't give way to
it," Mr. Lenox concluded.

"Oh, I give up. Spare me," cried Dick.

Mrs. Lenox rose with a little nod, and as Madeline swept past him
towards the door, Dick turned for an instant and stopped her
laughingly.

"Forgive me," he said. "I did not mean it. I felt like saying something
obnoxious."

"But you always used to want to be nice, Dick," she answered.

"Miss Elton," Mrs. Percival spoke severely, as a matron to a heedless
girl, "perhaps the gentlemen would prefer to have their smoke alone. Are
you coming to the drawing-room with us?"

Later, much later, Lena, in the privacy of her own room, awaited the
coming of her husband who seemed to her to prolong outrageously the game
of billiards which made his excuse for sitting up a little longer than
herself. She shook out her fluff of hair, and arrayed herself in a
bewildering pink dressing-gown from beneath which she toasted some very
pink toes before the fire. She knew what arguments told on the masculine
intellect. And at last Dick came.

"Sit down over there," she commanded. "No, you shan't come near me,
Dick, until I've said my say. I'm really much displeased, and you need
not act as though you thought it was a trifling matter."

Dick sat humbly in the spot appointed.

"Dick, I don't want you to say any more horrid little things about
women. You've done it several times lately. The other day you said
something to Mr. Early about his 'glorious freedom'; and you made a
sneering remark to Mr. Preston about women's small dishonesties."

"Only jokes, I assure you."

"Everybody knows that women are a great deal better than men."

"They must be," said Dick. "Literature is full of statements to that
effect."

"And marriage is far more desirable than 'glorious freedom'."

"It is," answered Dick. "So long as there are things to disagree about,
marriage will not lose its savor."

"You say that in a perfectly mean way, as though you did not really
believe anything nice. But whether you believe it or not, I am going to
ask you not to talk so any more," Mrs. Percival went on with dignity,
"because it sounds exactly like a criticism of me, and I think you owe
it to me to treat me with respect. What must people think of me when you
fling in--what do you call them--innue