n the chair before the
mirror. "Len," she said with a touch of petulance in her voice, "you get
into grouches and spur your imagination to all sorts of absurdities. I'm
very sleepy. Why can't you reserve your fault-finding until tomorrow?"

Len Haswell answered quietly, but obdurately. "For two reasons. In the
first place I sha'n't be able to sleep unless you answer me. In the
second place I shall probably see as much of you tomorrow as I have
today--which is nothing." His tone hardened. "You are too tired to give
me a few minutes, but you found it both possible and agreeable to give
Paul Burton the entire evening."

"Oh," she laughed easily and with well-simulated amusement, "I should
fancy from the contemptuous things I have heard you men say about Paul,
you would regard him as quite harmless."

"Paul!" repeated the man accusingly. "When did you begin calling him by
his first name? Does he call you Loraine, too?"

"Why not? We are friends." She looked up at her husband's face with an
air of injured innocence and he paced a turn or two across the floor
before he halted before her.

"I wish you would see less of him. I don't talk business to you often.
It bores you, but you know that we are always strained to hold the pace
that richer members of our set cut out. We have to pay very high for a
privilege which has no value to me except that you like it."

Loraine Haswell sighed--and masked a yawn behind a small uplifted hand.
"I wonder," she mused as though to herself, yet quite loud enough to be
heard, "why some men find it so hard to make money, and to others it
seems so easy."

Len Haswell flushed brick red to his cheekbones. He bit his lip and
forced himself to remain silent for a moment, then he spoke gently. "I'm
sorry I am not as brilliant a financier as some others. Nature doesn't
endow us all alike. A good many people would regard me as fairly
successful, I dare say. For myself a small house on the Sound would be
good enough, if you were there--"

"Thank you," she answered with deliberate cruelty, "I don't think I'd
care for that."

The man's scowl became ominously black. The hands at his side twitched,
and the temper with which few credited him because of his perpetual
control, flared out.

"No, by the Almighty, you would rather prefer to be where the gods of
life are pleasure and extravagance and selfish indulgence! Where the
loyal love of a husband means less than the flatteries of a tame
cat...."