her whirring
thoughts.

"Frank, don't ask too much at once. I'm here because I am. We have just
landed. I left Emmeline on the pier with the custom officers and came to
you immediately. Say you're glad to see me--my old Frank!"

"But, but--" he stammered.

"Yes, I know what you are thinking. I was engaged for the Paris Opera--"
"Was?" he blankly ejaculated--"and I couldn't stand it. Locateli--"
"Who?" "Locateli. You remember him, Frank, my old teacher? He got me
into the Opera and he got me out of it." "Do you mean that low-lived
scamp who gave you lessons here, the man I kicked out of doors?" She
flushed. Etharedge stared at her. He was near despair. His dream of an
artistic life on the Continent was as a bubble burst in the midday
sunlight. He loved his wife, but the shock of her unheralded arrival,
the hasty ill-news, proved too much for this patient man's nerves. So
he transposed his wrath to Locateli.

"Well, I'm damned!" he blurted, kicking aside the chair and walking the
floor like a caged cat. "And to think that scoundrel of an Italian--"
"Frenchman, Frank," she interposed--"that foreigner, who ought to have
been shot for insulting you, that Locateli, followed you to Paris and
mixed up in your affairs! And you say he had you pushed out of the
Opera? The intriguing villain! How did you come to see him?"

"He gave me lessons in Paris." "Locateli gave you--Lord!" The man was
speechless. He put his hand to his forehead several times, and then
gazed at his wife's hair. She fell to sobbing. "Frank," she wailed,
"Frank! I've come back to you because I couldn't stand it any longer--it
was killing me. Can't you see it? Can't you believe me? No woman, no
American girl can go through that life and come out of it--happy. It
made me sick, Frank, but I did not like to tell you. And now, after I've
thrown up a career simply because I can't be your wife and a great
artist at the same time, your suspicions are driving me mad." Her tone
was poignant. He looked out on the harbor as another steamer passed the
Statue bound for Europe.

"Ask Emmeline!" She, too, followed the vessel with hopeless expression
and clasped his shoulder. "Oh! Sweetheart, aren't you glad to have me
back again? It's Edna, your wife! I've been through lots for the sake of
music. Now I want my husband--I'm not happy away from him." He suddenly
embraced her. Forgotten the disappointment, forgotten the fast vanishing
hope of a luxurious life, of seeing h