he didn't approve! The whole affair was decidedly mixing.
Roger went away vaguely uneasy, and he felt that Deborah was even more
disturbed than himself.

"Those two," she remarked to her father, "are so fearfully wrapt up in each
other it makes me afraid. Oh, it's all right, I suppose, and I wouldn't for
worlds try to interfere. But I can't help feeling somehow that no two
people with such an abundance of youth and money and happiness have the
right to be so amazingly--selfish!"

"They ought to have children," Roger said.

"But look at Edith," his daughter rejoined. "She hasn't a single interest
that I can find outside her home. It seems to have swallowed her, body and
soul." A frowning look of perplexity swept over Deborah's mobile face, and
with a whimsical sigh she exclaimed, "Oh, this queer business of families!"

In December there came a little crash. Late one evening Laura came bursting
in upon them in a perfect tantrum, every nerve in her lithe body tense,
her full lips visibly quivering, her voice unsteady, and her big black eyes
aflame with rage. She was jealous of her husband and "that nasty little
cat!" Roger learned no more about it, for Deborah motioned him out of the
room. He heard their two voices talk on and on, until Laura's slowly
quieted down. Soon afterwards she left the house, and Deborah came in to
him.

"She's gone home, eh?" asked Roger.

"Yes, she has, poor silly child--she said at first she had come here to
stay."

"By George," he said. "As bad as that?"

"Of course it isn't as bad as that!" Deborah cried impatiently. "She just
built and built on silly suspicions and let herself get all worked up! I
don't see what they're coming to!" For a few moments nothing was said.
"It's so unnatural!" she exclaimed. "Men and women weren't _made_ to live
like that!" Roger scowled into his paper.

"Better leave 'em alone," he admonished her. "You can't help--they're not
your kind. Don't you mix into this affair."

But Deborah did. She remembered that her sister had once shown quite a
talent for amateur theatricals; and to give Laura something to do, Deborah
persuaded her to take a dramatic club in her school. And Laura, rather to
Roger's surprise, became an enthusiast down there. She worked like a slave
at rehearsals, and upon the costumes she spent money with a lavish hand.
Moreover, instead of being annoyed, as Edith was, at Deborah's prominence
in the press, Laura gloried in it, as though this