the matter is," continued he, "she wouldn't look
at me as long as she was tied to her husband, miserable rat though
he was; and he was and is a rat! I could call and take her out to
dinner, and all that, but--pst! nothing more! and she was always
telling me how I was her good angel and inspired her to higher
things! Gad! even then it bored me! But I could see nothing but
her face. You know how it is. I was twenty-six and a clerk in a
hardware house."

He laughed grimly.

"Well, as luck would have it, my Uncle John died just about that
time and left me ten thousand dollars and I started in to make her
my own by getting her a divorce. Now, this husband of hers was a
wretched fellow--the son of a neighbor--who never got beyond being
a waiter in a railroad station. Say, it is rather rough, eh? To
think of me, Dillingham, of Dillingham, Hodges & Flynn, the biggest
independent steel man in the State, tied up to a pale-faced woman
who can't speak the King's English properly and whose first husband
is a waiter--yes, a waiter to-day, understand, in a railroad
restaurant at Baltimore! It makes me sick every time I go to
Washington. I can't eat--fact! So I hired a lawyer for her--you
know him, I guess--Bunce. Oscar Willoughby Bunce! And he prepared
divorce papers--Oh, we had cause enough! And the next time Hawkins
--that was the husband's name, Arthur P. Hawkins--came over to New
York, to borrow some money from his wife, Bunce slapped a summons
on him. It makes me squirm to think how delighted I was to know
we had actually begun our case. Hawkins hired a lawyer, I believe,
and pretended he was going to put up a defence, but I bought him
off and we got our decree by default. Then, gentlemen"--Dillingham
paused with a wry face--"I had the inestimable privilege of marrying
my present wife!"

He sucked meditatively on his cigar for a few moments before resuming
his narrative.

"Curious, isn't it--the fascination of the stage? You, gentlemen,
probably have observed it even more than I have; but when he sees
a slim girl with yellow curls capering around in tights behind the
footlights, a young man's imagination runs riot and he fancies her
the incarnation of coquetry and the personification of vivacious
loveliness. I admit it--the present Mrs. Dillingham was a dancer.
On the stage she used to ogle me out of my shoes and off it she'd
help me spend my money and drink my wine and jolly me up to beat
the cars; but