ng of his shoulders as wide a screen as possible.

Now she moved and stood with the fingers of one hand resting lightly on
the spot where lay a profusion of scattered sheets and envelopes. These
were papers which, should she see and recognize them--granting that she
had not already done so--would spell divorce or separation. Tollman drew
a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. At the price of
any concession he must get her out of that room for five minutes!

"No," she went on. "It hadn't occurred to you, because you really
dislike all change. You are a reactionary ... and I'm afraid I'm what
you'd call a radical."

"But, dear--" he spoke eagerly, ready to sacrifice without combat even
his cherished reverence for the unchanging order of his fathers: even
his aversion to the wasting of money--"I haven't told you before because
I wanted to surprise you. I've let all that wait until you should be
here to direct it. I wanted the renovated house, like the renovated man,
to bear the stamp of your designing."

The wife's eyes flashed with surprise and apparent pleasure. "Do you
really mean it?" she exclaimed. "Do you really mean that I may do what I
like with the place?"

"Yes, yes--" he hastened to assure her. "You are in supreme command
here. You have _carte blanche_."

For a while she did not speak, but when she did her voice was very soft.
"Eben," she said almost falteringly, "you give me everything--and I give
you so little."

A few minutes later, with vast relief, he watched her go through the
door, then collapsed, a limp creature, into the chair by the table, his
arms going out and sweeping the papers into a pile close to his body.
His face, relaxed from the strain of dissembling, looked old and his jaw
sagged.

But before he had sufficiently recovered to investigate the documents he
heard a rustle and looked around. Conscience was standing in the
door--and he feared that even the slouch of his shoulders, seen from
behind, might have been dangerously revealing. His wife's level tone as
she spoke, no less than her words, intensified his conviction of defeat.

"The note that I asked you to mail to Stuart Farquaharson--that night
when he left--never reached him."

So she had, after all, been playing with him as a cat plays with a
mouse! She had left the room, only to return and confront him when he
was unmanned. Something of cornered desperation came into his eyes, but
with a final instinct of pre