hyme who had come to
town sporting velvet gowns. Everything about Perry Bridewell was built
on so opulent a scale that in thinking of him one found oneself using
almost unconsciously a Romanesque and florid diction.

"There is something you'd like to say to me," suggested Adams presently.
"I'm in no hurry, of course, but isn't this as good a time as any
other?"

"By Jove, that's just what I was thinking," returned Perry, with a burst
of confidence, "but it isn't really anything, you know--that is, I mean,
it isn't anything that--that's real business."

A pretty woman passed suddenly under the electric light, and even in his
embarrassment, which was great, he followed her with the animated glance
which he instinctively devoted to vanishing feminine beauty.

"Thank God, there's no real business between us," retorted Adams, "and
that's why it's a rest to spend a half-hour with you--because you don't
know a piece of literature from a publisher's advertisement."

"We're such old friends, you know," pursued Perry, forgetting the moment
which he had wasted upon the pretty woman, "that when there's a thing on
my mind I feel--well, I feel a--a deuced queer fish not to tell you."

Adams laughed good naturedly.

"For heaven's sake don't remain long in a fishy sensation," he
rejoined. "Let's have it out and over. By the way, may I ask if it
concerns you or me?"

Perry shook his head as he tugged nervously at his fair moustache. "Look
here, old man," he said at last, "I know, of course, that Mrs. Adams is
as innocent as a baby--Gerty's just like her and there are plenty of
women made that way. It's the men who are such confounded brutes," he
commented with pensive morality.

"Oh, is that it?" responded Adams, and he turned upon the other a look
that was coolly interrogative. "Come, now, we'll take it quietly. You're
one of the best friends I have, and I want to know what they're saying
about my wife."

"It's that damned Brady!" exclaimed Perry, while he felt for his
handkerchief, and blew his nose with violence.

"All right--it's that damned Brady?" repeated Adams.

"If I didn't think more of you than of any man on earth I'd be shot
before I'd tell you," protested Perry, and added with a desperate rush
under fire.

"He had too much champagne last night--though, as for that matter, I've
seen him upset by a cocktail--and afterward at billiards he told Skinker
that--that Mrs. Adams--you understand, old chap, it's all hi