iful
each ornament, it would be difficult, she felt, to decide what to
banish.

The man's gaze followed hers, speculatively, roaming over the costly
objects. He was by no means anxious to make a display of his wealth.

He dreaded above all things the charge of vulgarity, distrusting his
first wife's taste, not being quite sure of his own. A compactly built,
well-featured man of middle size and pale complexion; a man careful and
correct in speech, manner and dress; in his gently reserved, modest
bearing giving no sign that he had raised himself far above his origin,
that his wealth was new.

"Do what you like here," he said to his wife, as if reading her
thoughts. "Alter the disposition of the furniture--do away with it
altogether. I am by no means wedded to things as they are."

He crossed as he spoke to a rosewood cabinet placed against the
opposite wall. On its polished surface, above its innumerable little
shelves and drawers, a Crown Derby tea and coffee service was set
forth. Standing in the midst, propped between a basin and a cup, was
the unframed photograph of a woman. This the man removed. Holding it
loosely between his finger and thumb, still talking to his wife, he
returned with it to his old position on the hearth.

"I have not set foot in this room since--for a year," he said. "I
thought I would leave everything till you came. Do just as you like."

"You are so good to me----" she began, and then started forward in her
chair. "Oh, don't, don't, love!" she cried. "Don't burn her picture!"

She was too late. For one instant the face of the first wife looked up
at her, smiling, fat, fatuous, from the heart of the glowing coals,
then, with a stab of the poker, wielded by a remorseless hand, vanished
in the blaze.

"Oh, love!" she sighed, reproachfully, "Oh, love!"

"Why not?" he asked, with a smile which went no further than his
close-set lips. He put down the poker on the hearth and rose up again.
"She must have laid in a stock of hundreds of those photographs," he
said. "The servants appear to have an inexhaustible supply. In spite
of--discouragement--they kept my dressing-room and study-table
garnished with them till I ordered them to desist."

The new wife looked away from him into the fire in a minute's silence.
"It seems cruel," at last she said, with an obvious effort. "I wish you
had not burnt it, love. At least, not to-night. In this big house there
should be room for me and--her photograph