ur's mouth flew up.

"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.

The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in a
piece of sentiment.

"Ye-es," he stammered.

"Sure?"

"Quite!" The answer was a little sulky.

Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the reading
of the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too much occupied
in considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused, and to do
this he was obliged to keep his eyes upon him. Those features, just
pleasantly rugged; the springy poise of the figure; the hair neither
straight nor curly, neither short nor long; the haunting look of his
eyes and the humorous look of his mouth; his clothes neither shabby nor
dandified; his serviceable, fine hands; above all, the equability of
the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the impression of a perfect balance
between heart and head, sensibility and reason, theory and its opposite.

"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you
understand, of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on
taking?"

If they didn't get on! Shelton smiled. Mr. Paramor did not smile, and
again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against something
poised but firm. He remarked irritably:

"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having it."

This time his uncle smiled. It was difficult for Shelton to feel angry
at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too impersonal
to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.

"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned. We 're bound to look
at every case, you know, old boy."

The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
strong in Shelton. He was not one of those who could not face the notion
of transferred affections--at a safe distance.

"All right, Uncle Ted," said he. For one mad moment he was attacked by
the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce. Would it not be common
chivalry to make her independent, able to change her affections if she
wished, unhampered by monetary troubles? You only needed to take out the
words "during coverture."

Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face. There was no meanness
there, but neither was there encouragement in that comprehensive brow
with its wide sweep of hair. "Quixotism," it seemed to say, "has merits,
but--" The room, too, with its wide hor