me long and intently. I even felt myself turning
pink under that prolonged stare of appraisal.

"You are still easy to look at," he over-slangily and over-generously
admitted. "But I do regret that you aren't a little easier to live
with!"

I could force a little laugh, at that, but I couldn't quite keep a
tremor out of my voice when I spoke again.

"I'm sorry you see only my bad side, Dinky-Dunk. But it's kindness
that seems to bring everything that is best out of us women. We're
terribly like sliced pineapple in that respect: give us just a
sprinkling of sugar, and out come all the juices!"

It was Dinky-Dunk's color that deepened a little as he turned and
knocked out his pipe.

"That's a Chaddie McKail argument," he merely observed as he stood up.
"And a Chaddie McKail argument impresses me as suspiciously like Swiss
cheese: it doesn't seem to be genuine unless you can find plenty of
holes in it."

I did my best to smile at his humor.

"But this isn't an argument," I quietly corrected. "I'd look at it
more in the nature of an ultimatum."

That brought him up short, as I had intended it to do. He stood
worrying over it as Bobs and Scotty worry over a bone.

"I'm afraid," he finally intoned, "I've been repeatedly doing you the
great injustice of underestimating your intelligence!"

"That," I told him, "is a point where I find silence imposed upon
me."

He didn't speak until he got to the door.

"Well, I'm glad we've cleared the air a bit anyway," he said with a
grim look about his Holbein Astronomer old mouth as he went out.

But we haven't cleared the air. And it disturbs me more than I can say
to find that I have reservations from my husband. It bewilders me to
see that I can't be perfectly candid with him. But there are certain
deeper feelings that I can no longer uncover in his presence.
Something holds me back from explaining to him that this fixed dread
of mine for all cities is largely based on my loss of little Pee-Wee.
For if I hadn't gone to New York that time, to Josie Langdon's
wedding, I might never have lost my boy. They did the best they
could, I suppose, before their telegrams brought me back, but they
didn't seem to understand the danger. And little did I dream, before
the Donnelly butler handed me that first startling message just as we
were climbing into the motor to go down to the Rochambeau to meet
Chinkie and Tavvy, that within a week I was to sit and watch the
cruelest thing th