said:

"Any time you want her back, don't be delicate."

But O'Mally shook his red head and laughed.

"Oh, I'm no Indian giver!"

_Century_, May 1918

_Her Boss_

Paul Wanning opened the front door of his house in Orange, closed it
softly behind him, and stood looking about the hall as he drew off
his gloves.

Nothing was changed there since last night, and yet he stood gazing
about him with an interest which a long-married man does not often
feel in his own reception hall. The rugs, the two pillars, the
Spanish tapestry chairs, were all the same. The Venus di Medici
stood on her column as usual and there, at the end of the hall
(opposite the front door), was the full-length portrait of Mrs.
Wanning, maturely blooming forth in an evening gown, signed with the
name of a French painter who seemed purposely to have made his
signature indistinct. Though the signature was largely what one paid
for, one couldn't ask him to do it over.

In the dining room the colored man was moving about the table set
for dinner, under the electric cluster. The candles had not yet been
lighted. Wanning watched him with a homesick feeling in his heart.
They had had Sam a long while, twelve years, now. His warm hall, the
lighted dining-room, the drawing room where only the flicker of the
wood fire played upon the shining surfaces of many objects--they
seemed to Wanning like a haven of refuge. It had never occurred to
him that his house was too full of things. He often said, and he
believed, that the women of his household had "perfect taste." He
had paid for these objects, sometimes with difficulty, but always
with pride. He carried a heavy life-insurance and permitted himself
to spend most of the income from a good law practise. He wished,
during his life-time, to enjoy the benefits of his wife's
discriminating extravagance.

Yesterday Wanning's doctor had sent him to a specialist. Today the
specialist, after various laboratory tests, had told him most
disconcerting things about the state of very necessary, but hitherto
wholly uninteresting, organs of his body.

The information pointed to something incredible; insinuated that his
residence in this house was only temporary; that he, whose time was so
full, might have to leave not only his house and his office and his
club, but a world with which he was extremely well satisfied--the
only world he knew anything about.

Wanning u