omething which cannot possibly
concern you. You were not the subject of conversation, and your name
was brought in by accident. I hope you will be good enough to allow us
to finish our discussion."

My mother-in-law evidently knows when to stop. She eyed me steadily
for a moment.

"Dicky," she said at last, and her manner of sweeping me out of the
universe was superb, "in five minutes I wish to speak to you in my
room."

"All right, mother." Dicky's tone was unsteady, and as his mother's
door closed behind her I prepared myself to face his increased anger.

"How dared you to speak to my mother in that fashion?" he demanded
hoarsely.

When I am most angry, a diabolically aggravating spirit seems to
possess me. I could feel it enmeshing me.

"Please don't be melodramatic, Dicky," I said mockingly, "and if you
have quite finished, I will go."

"No, you won't, at least not until I have told you something," he
snarled.

He sprang to my side, and seized my shoulder in a cruel grip that made
me wince.

"We'll just have this out once for all," he said. "If you go out of
this door you go out for good. I don't care for the role of complacent
husband."

The insult left me deadly cold. I knew, of course, that Dicky was
so blinded by rage and jealousy that he had no idea of what he was
saying. But ungovernable as I knew his temper to be, he had passed the
limits of my forebearance.

"I will answer that speech in 10 minutes," I said and walked into my
room again.

For I had come to a decision as startling as it was sudden. I hastily
threw some most necessary things into a bag. Then I put a ten-dollar
bill of the housekeeping money into my purse, resolving to send
it back to Dicky as soon as I could get access to my own tiny bank
account, the remnant of my teaching savings. Into a parcel I placed
the rest of the housekeeping money, my wedding and engagement rings
and the lavalliere which Dicky had given me as a wedding present. I
put them in the back of the top drawer of my dressing table, for I
knew if I handed them to Dicky in his present frame of mind he would
destroy them. Then I walked steadily into the living room, bag in
hand.

Dicky was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the murmur of voices in his
mother's room. I went to the door and knocked. Dicky threw it open,
his face still showing the marks of his anger.

"You will find the housekeeping money in the top drawer of my dressing
table," I said calmly. "I