lf so extravagant as most of the women we know."

Dick drew away and became rigid again.

"Extravagant!" he exclaimed as though to himself. "You have cost me my
self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best
friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing he loves?"

"I do think, Dick," said Lena severely, "that you can talk the silliest
nonsense of any person I ever heard. What on earth is the meaning of all
this? No--no--" as she saw that he was getting ready to reply. "I have
not time to hear. I thought that tiresome Mr. Norris would never go.
What can you see in him?--Have you forgotten that we are going to the
Country Club for dinner? It's long past time for you to dress."

"Imagine it! I had forgotten that dinner!" Dick answered bitterly. For a
moment he turned away as though, he would not see her while he
readjusted something in himself. He felt like a different man and looked
to her indefinably strange when he faced her again quietly. To himself
he was saying, "What would Ellery do?" and on his answer to his own
question he was readjusting his whole life.

"We will not go out this evening, Lena," he said. "We've come to a
crisis in our affairs more important than a club dinner."

"What, have you been losing money?" cried Lena, startled and resentful.

Dick looked at her with a very unpleasant smile.

"No," he answered. "I wonder what you would say if I told you that I was
ruined?"

Lena gasped with horror. For the moment she could not speak. A gulf of
poverty--no one knew better than she what that meant--yawned before her.
A blind fury against Dick, if he should have plunged her into this,
possessed her; and Dick watched her and read her as he had never done
before.

"Will you sit down?" he asked courteously. "I want to talk with
you--just by our two selves. I haven't lost any money, Lena. Let me
relieve your mind of its worst apprehension." Her face smoothed, but
she seated herself quietly, puzzled and foreboding. Dick was so
singularly inaccessible.

"I've lost no money," he repeated, "but I've come desperately near ruin
for all that. Lena, a moment ago I made a real appeal to your love. You
answered me by a shrug and a push for fear that I might muss that very
pretty and exceedingly becoming gown. It was a kind of illustration of
all our married life."

Lena still stared at him dumbly, vague with uncomprehending fear. This
didn't seem like the easy-going husband she k