ook after the
child. We've talked it over a----"

"I don't want to hear about it," snapped Fairfax, hitting the arm of
his chair with his fist. "You're no good, that's all there is to it.
You are a joke, a laughing stock. Do you suppose that she can possibly
love a man like you? A woman wants a man about her, not the caricature
of one."

"I intend to get a job as soon as----" began Harvey, as if he had not
heard a word his visitor was saying.

"Now, see here," exclaimed Fairfax, coming to his feet. "I'm a man of
few words. I came out here to make you a proposition. It is between
you and me, and no one need be the wiser. I'm not such a fool as to
intrust a thing of this kind to an outsider. Is there any likelihood
of any one hearing us?"

Nellie's husband shrank lower into his chair and shook his head. He
seemed to have lost the power of speech. Fairfax drew a chair up
closer, however, and lowered his voice.

"You've got a price. Men of your type always have. I told Nellie I
would see you to-day. I'll be plain with you. She's tired of you, of
this miserable attachment. You are impossible. That's settled. We
won't go into that. Now I'm here, man to man, to find out how much you
will take and agree to a separation."

Harvey stiffened. He thought for a moment that his heart had stopped
beating.

"I don't believe I understand," he muttered.

"Don't you understand the word 'separation'?"

"Agree to a separation from what? Great God, you don't mean a
separation from Phoebe?"

"Don't be a fool! Use your brain, if you've got one."

"Do--you--mean--Nellie?" fell slowly, painfully from the dry lips of
the little man in the Morris chair.

"Certainly."

"Does she want to--to leave me?" The tears started in his big blue
eyes. He blinked violently.

"It has come to that. She can't go on as she has been going. It's
ridiculous. You are anxious to go back to Blakeville, she says. Well,
that's where you belong. Somebody's drug store out there you'd like to
own, I believe. Now, I am prepared to see that you get that drug store
and a matter of ten or twenty thousand dollars besides. Money means
nothing to me. All you have to do is to make no answer to the charges
she will bring----"

Harvey leaped to his feet with a cry of abject pain.

"Did she send you here to say this to me?" he cried, shrilly, his
figure shaking with suppressed fury.

"No," said Fairfax, involuntarily drawing back. "This is between you
and me. S