ing to say then--" He broke
off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in
his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. "I never expected I'd have
to say anything like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask
you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn."

Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. "Well?"

"I felt the time had come for me to know about it," he went on. "You
never told me anything--"

"You never asked," she interposed, curtly.

"Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much," said Roscoe. "It looks to
me now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good
many people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down
to work all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed
soon as I'd got the paper read--unless there was some good musical show
in town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or
so, I began to see something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it."

"Wrong?" she said. "What like?"

"You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and
excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then,
Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long
ago you got to picking on him about every little thing he did; you got
to quarreling with him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see
you'd been quarreling whenever I came in and he was here."

"Do you object to that?" asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.

"Yes--when it injures my wife's health!" he returned, with a quick lift
of his eyes to hers. "You began to run down just about the time you
began falling out with him." He stepped close to her. "See here, Sibyl,
I'm going to know what it means."

"Oh, you ARE?" she snapped.

"You're trembling," he said, gravely.

"Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!"

"That was all I was going to say the other day," he said. "I was going
to ask you--"

"Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else
have you to say to-night?"

"To-night," he replied, with grim swiftness, "I want to know why you
keep telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here."

She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, "And what
else did Edith want you to ask me?"

"I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn," he said,
fiercely.

"Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her whe