have a haemorrhage of the
brain. And you divorce me, and then----"

"Look here, Luke, you'd better go and lie down for a little. You've
been bicycling in the sun, you know."

"What do you mean? Wouldn't it happen so? Isn't it all absolutely
inevitable?"

"Not absolutely," said Mabel. "The previous knowledge that one has of
you would go for something. There was never any sign of an attachment
of that kind between you and Effie. If you had been the father of the
child you would most certainly not have left her alone, without any
provision, at the time the child was born. I should be quite certain
of that. So would the two maids here. Effie would apply to young
Dobson, and failing him, to old Dobson. This is about the last house
to which she would come. Her instinct would be to keep away from the
neighborhood where she was known. If her own father agreed to take her
in, it's almost certain that he would take the baby as well. Your
ideas about that convention are exaggerated, and old-fashioned. If she
did come here, and you insisted on her staying, I should put up with
it, though I should not like it, until some arrangement could be made
for her to go elsewhere with her child. And that arrangement could be
made easily and quickly. I do not see why I should dismiss the maids,
and if I did they are paid with your money, and are much more devoted
to you than they are to me. You would only have to speak and they
would remain. No seducer would bring his victim and her child to the
house where his wife was living. You would be thought quixotic but not
guilty. If Effie saw that you were cut by everybody and that she had
brought trouble on you, she would be particularly careful not to cause
more serious trouble for you by committing suicide. And if she
committed suicide, she would not implicate you in it by making you buy
the poison. She would neither make fruit tart, nor clean a straw hat,
because she simply would not have the time. You don't know much about
young babies, do you? I should not divorce you, and should have no
evidence on which I could get a divorce. In fact, the whole thing's
skittles. By the way, when did Effie have her baby?"

"She never did," said Luke despondently. "That's always the way.
Whenever I make a beautiful thing, some cow always gets it. It's
happened before. If I wrote my beautiful biography, some cow would
parody it. The world's full of cows."

"Well, I'm sorry, of course," said Mabel. "You ca