ect
about which, she told herself, she could no longer keep from speaking.
So soon as an opportunity presented itself, which was when Jadwin laid
down his paper and drew his coffee-cup towards him, Laura exclaimed:

"Curtis."

"Well, old girl?"

"Curtis, dear, ... when is it all going to end--your speculating? You
never used to be this way. It seems as though, nowadays, I never had
you to myself. Even when you are not going over papers and reports and
that, or talking by the hour to Mr. Gretry in the library--even when
you are not doing all that, your mind seems to be away from me--down
there in La Salle Street or the Board of Trade Building. Dearest, you
don't know. I don't mean to complain, and I don't want to be exacting
or selfish, but--sometimes I--I am lonesome. Don't interrupt," she
said, hastily. "I want to say it all at once, and then never speak of
it again. Last night, when Mr. Gretry was here, you said, just after
dinner, that you would be all through your talk in an hour. And I
waited.... I waited till eleven, and then I went to bed. Dear I--I--I
was lonesome. The evening was so long. I had put on my very prettiest
gown, the one you said you liked so much, and you never seemed to
notice. You told me Mr. Gretry was going by nine, and I had it all
planned how we would spend the evening together."

But she got no further. Her husband had taken her in his arms, and had
interrupted her words with blustering exclamations of self-reproach and
self-condemnation. He was a brute, he cried, a senseless, selfish ass,
who had no right to such a wife, who was not worth a single one of the
tears that by now were trembling on Laura's lashes.

"Now we won't speak of it again," she began. "I suppose I am selfish--"

"Selfish, nothing!" he exclaimed. "Don't talk that way. I'm the one--"

"But," Laura persisted, "some time you will--get out of this
speculating for good? Oh, I do look forward to it so! And, Curtis, what
is the use? We're so rich now we can't spend our money. What do you
want to make more for?"

"Oh, it's not the money," he answered. "It's the fun of the thing; the
excitement--"

"That's just it, the 'excitement.' You don't know, Curtis. It is
changing you. You are so nervous sometimes, and sometimes you don't
listen to me when I talk to you. I can just see what's in your mind.
It's wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat, all the time. Oh, if you
knew how I hated and feared it!"

"Well, old girl,