he slight tremor of contact halted her and
her soft, irregular breath touched his face.

"What a girl like you needs," he laughed, taking her into his arms, "is
a man to hold her this way--every now and then, and"--he kissed
her--"tell her she is incomparable--which I cannot truthfully tell you,
dear." He released her at arms' length.

"I don't know whose fault it is," he went on: "I don't know whether he
still really cares for you in spite of his weak peregrinations to other
shrines; but you still care for him. And it's up to you to make him
what he can be--the average husband. There are only two kinds, Rosalie,
the average and the bad."

She looked straight into his eyes, but the deep, mantling colour belied
her audacity.

"Do you know," she said, "that we haven't--lived together for two
years?"

"I don't want to know such things," he said gently.

"Well, you do know now. I--am--very much alone. You see I have already
become capable of saying anything--and of doing it, too."

There came a reckless glimmer into her eyes; she set her teeth--a trick
of hers; the fresh lips parted slightly under her rapid breathing.

"Do you think," she said unevenly, "that I'm going on all my life like
this--without anything more than the passing friendship of men to
balance the example he sets me?"

"No, I think something is bound to happen, Rosalie. May I suggest what
ought to happen?"

She nodded thoughtfully; only the quiver of her lower lip betrayed the
tension of self-control.

"Take him back," he said.

"I no longer care for him."

"You are mistaken."

After a moment she said: "I don't think so; truly I don't. All
consideration for him has died in me. His conduct doesn't
matter--doesn't hurt me any more----"

"Yes, it does. He's just a plain ass--an average ass--ownerless, and,
like all asses, convinced that he can take care of himself. Go and put
the halter on him again."

"Go--and--what do you mean?"

"Tether him. You did once. It's up to you; it's usually up to a woman
when a man wanders untethered. What one woman, or a dozen, can do with a
man his wife can do in the same fashion! What won him in the beginning
always holds good until he thinks he has won you. Then the average man
flourishes his heels. He is doing it. What won him was not you alone, or
love, alone; it was his uncertainty of both that fascinated him. That's
what charms him in others; uncertainty. Many men are that way. It's a
sporting stre