n as soon as her
strength returned. She lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing
disheveled in the doorway, "Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured. "I
don't want to see you." And as he turned away she added, "I'm kind of
sorry for you, Roscoe."

Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the
disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to
telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into
a momentary distraction over a counter.

Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan,
like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly
fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool,
and thus set her on fire.

Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence
had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing
fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she
went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not
think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.
She had written to a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in
apartments--and a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring
peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and
she left upon a Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and
having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have
kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her departure
had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that
evening, to find her gone. "I suppose they'll be maried there," he said,
casually.

Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
fuming. "Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted. "I
don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept
away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business.
For Hea