men who like bargain-counters, and who eat chocolate
meringue for lunch, and then stop in at a continuous performance, go
shopping. It must be the comic-paper sort of wives who go about
matching shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, I must have made Miss
Delamar's understudy misrepresent her. I beg your pardon, my dear," he
said aloud to the Picture. "You did _not_ go shopping this
morning. You probably went to a woman's luncheon somewhere. Tell me
about that."

"Oh, yes, I went to lunch with the Antwerps," said the Picture, "and
they had that Russian woman there who is getting up subscriptions for
the Siberian prisoners. It's rather fine of her, because it exiles her
from Russia. And she is a princess."

"That's nothing," Stuart interrupted; "they're all princesses when you
see them on Broadway."

"I beg your pardon," said the Picture.

"It's of no consequence," said Stuart, apologetically, "it's a comic
song. I forgot you didn't like comic songs. Well--go on."

"Oh, then I went to a tea, and then I stopped in to hear Madame Ruvier
read a paper on the Ethics of Ibsen, and she--"

Stuart's voice had died away gradually, and he caught himself
wondering whether he had told George to lay in a fresh supply of
cigars. "I beg your pardon," he said, briskly, "I was listening, but I
was just wondering whether I had any cigars left. You were saying that
you had been at Madame Ruvier's, and--"

"I am afraid that you were not interested," said the Picture. "Never
mind, it's my fault. Sometimes I think I ought to do things of more
interest, so that I should have something to talk to you about when
you come home."

Stuart wondered at what hour he would come home now that he was
married. As a bachelor he had been in the habit of stopping on his way
up-town from the law-office at the club, or to take tea at the houses
of the different girls he liked. Of course he could not do that now as
a married man. He would instead have to limit his calls to married
women, as all the other married men of his acquaintance did. But at
the moment he could not think of any attractive married women who
would like his dropping in on them in such a familiar manner, and the
other sort did not as yet appeal to him.

He seated himself in front of the coal fire in the library, with the
Picture in a chair close beside him, and as he puffed pleasantly on
his cigar he thought how well this suited him, and how delightful it
was to find content in so