that," she interposed. "It could have been abridged, a
trifle. I barely got six words out of you, that evening; and let me tell
you, Wally, a woman never forgets neglect. She may forgive it; but
forget it, never!"

"Oh, well, if you put it that way--" he began, but checked himself in
time to suppress the cutting rejoinder he had at his tongue's end.

"I do, and it's vital, Wally," she answered. "It's all part and parcel
of some singular kind of change that's been coming over you, lately,
like a blight. You haven't been yourself, at all, these few days past.
Something or other, I don't know what, has been coming between us.
You've got something else on your mind, beside me--something bigger and
more important to you than I am--and--and--"

He pulled out his gold cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steady
his nerve, and faced her with a smile--the worst tactic he could
possibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful in
handling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and now
that lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by moment
nearer the edge of catastrophe.

"I don't like it at all, Waldron," she resumed, again. "You were late,
the other night, in taking me to the Flower Show. You were late, today,
for our appointment here; and the ten minutes I gave you to get ready
in, stretched out to twenty before you--"

He interrupted her with a gesture of uncontrollable vexation.

"Really, my dear Kate," he exclaimed, "if you--er--insist on holding me
to account for every moment--"

"You've been drinking, too, a little," she kept on. "And you know I
detest it! And just now, when I beat you in a square game, you so far
forgot yourself as to swear. Now, Waldron--"

"Oh, puritanical, eh?" he sneered, ignoring the danger signals in her
eyes. Even yet there might have been some chance of avoiding shipwreck,
had he heeded those twin beacons, humbled himself, made amends by due
apology and promised reformation. For though Catherine never had truly
loved this man, some years older than herself and of radically different
character, still she liked and respected him, and found him--by his very
force and dominance--far more to her taste than the insipid hangers-on,
sons of fortune or fortune-hunters, who, like the sap-brained Van
Slyke, made up so great a part of her "set."

So, all might yet have been amended; but this was not to be. Never yet
had "Tiger" Waldron bowed the