have somebody like him to slough the blame on in
case of trouble."

"By gad!"--the exclamation burst from him involuntarily--"but you're a
cold-blooded proposition."

She construed this as a compliment.

"Merely business foresight, my dear Mr. Symes," she smirked
complacently. "Some fool, you know, might think he could get a judgment
if he didn't like the way we handled him."

"And you're sure he couldn't?"

"Lord!--no. Not out here." Her leg slipped over her knee and her foot
slumped to the floor. She slid lower in the chair, until her head rested
on the back, her sprawling legs outstretched, her fingers clasped across
her starched waistcoat, upon her face an expression of humorous disdain.
"Let me tell you a story to illustrate what you can do and get away with
it--to ease your mind if you're afraid of gettin' into trouble on my
account. A friend of mine who had a diploma from my school came out West
to practise and she had a case of a fellow with a slashed wrist--the
tendons were plumb severed. She didn't know how to draw 'em together, so
she just sewed up the outside skin. They shrunk, and he lost the use of
his hand. Then he goes back East for treatment and comes home full of
talk about damage suits and that sort of thing. Well, sir, she just
bluffed him down. Told him she had fixed 'em all right, but when he was
drunk he had torn the tendons loose and was tryin' to lay the blame on
her. She made her bluff stick, too. Funny, wasn't it?"

"Excruciating," said Symes.

She seemed strangely indifferent to his sarcasm--to his opinion.

"I can promise you," she urged, "that I'll be equal to any emergency."

"I've no doubt of it," he returned.

Symes smoked hard; he was thinking, not of the contract which he
intended to peremptorily refuse, but how best, in what words to tell
this woman that now more than ever he wished the intimacy between her
and his wife to end.

At the close of an impatient silence she demanded bluntly--

"Do I get the contract?"

With equal bluntness he responded--

"You do not."

She straightened herself instantly in the chair and he knew from the
look in her eyes that the clash had come.

"Do you want a bigger rake-off?" she sneered offensively.

"Do you think I'm a petty thief?"

She shrugged her shoulder cynically, but answered--

"It's legitimate."

"Perhaps; but I don't choose to do it. I refuse to force your
confessedly inexperienced and incompetent services upon my