be useless to interrogate the girl, for
she knew nothing of what had happened.

Then Mrs. Cutter told her story. She and her husband had started home
from Omaha together the morning before. They had to stop over several
hours at Waymore Junction to catch the Black Hawk train. During the
wait, Cutter left her at the depot and went to the Waymore bank to
attend to some business. When he returned, he told her that he would
have to stay overnight there, but she could go on home. He bought her
ticket and put her on the train. She saw him slip a twenty-dollar bill
into her handbag with her ticket. That bill, she said, should have
aroused her suspicions at once--but did not.

The trains are never called at little junction towns; everybody knows
when they come in. Mr. Cutter showed his wife's ticket to the conductor,
and settled her in her seat before the train moved off. It was not until
nearly nightfall that she discovered she was on the express bound for
Kansas City, that her ticket was made out to that point, and that Cutter
must have planned it so. The conductor told her the Black Hawk train was
due at Waymore twelve minutes after the Kansas City train left. She saw
at once that her husband had played this trick in order to get back to
Black Hawk without her. She had no choice but to go on to Kansas City
and take the first fast train for home.

Cutter could have got home a day earlier than his wife by any one of a
dozen simpler devices; he could have left her in the Omaha hotel, and
said he was going on to Chicago for a few days. But apparently it was
part of his fun to outrage her feelings as much as possible.

'Mr. Cutter will pay for this, Mrs. Burden. He will pay!' Mrs. Cutter
avouched, nodding her horse-like head and rolling her eyes.

Grandmother said she hadn't a doubt of it.

Certainly Cutter liked to have his wife think him a devil. In some
way he depended upon the excitement He could arouse in her hysterical
nature. Perhaps he got the feeling of being a rake more from his wife's
rage and amazement than from any experiences of his own. His zest
in debauchery might wane, but never Mrs. Cutter's belief in it. The
reckoning with his wife at the end of an escapade was something he
counted on--like the last powerful liqueur after a long dinner. The
one excitement he really couldn't do without was quarrelling with Mrs.
Cutter!

BOOK III. Lena Lingard

I

AT THE UNIVERSITY I had the good fortune