t the closet as Nita was entering the room?
Was it, possibly, because she could think of nothing but the great
relief of finding that it was Sprague, not her husband, who had been
writing love letters to Nita Selim?... A jealous woman--

"Miles," he began abruptly, "I think you'd better tell me how your wife
became so jealous of you and Nita Selim that she could get herself into
such a false position."

Tracey Miles reddened, but a gesture of one of his sunburned hands
restrained his wife's passionate defense of him. "It's the truth that
Flora is jealous-natured. And I suppose--" he faltered a moment, and his
eyes did not meet his wife's, "--that I liked seeing her a little bit
jealous of her old man. Sort of makes a man feel--well, big, you know.
And pretty important to somebody!"

"So you were just having a bit of fun with your wife, so far as Mrs.
Selim was concerned?" Dundee asked coldly.

The blood flowed through the thinning blond hair. "We-el, not exactly,"
he admitted frankly. "You see, I _did_ take a shine to Nita, and if I do
say so myself, she liked me a lot.... Oh, nothing serious! Just a little
flirtation, like most of our crowd have with each other--"

"Mrs. Miles," Dundee interrupted with sudden harshness, "are you _sure_
you did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you
looked for it?"

"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_ carried on a flirtation
or--an--an _affair_ with that Sprague insect--" Tracey began to bluster.

But Dundee's eyes were on Flora Miles, and he saw that her sallow skin
had tightened like greyish silk over her thin cheek bones, and that her
eyes looked suddenly dead and glassy.

"You _fainted_, you say, Mrs. Miles," Dundee went on inexorably. "Was it
because, by any chance, this note--" and he tapped the sheet which had
caused so much trouble--"revealed the fact that Nita Selim and Dexter
Sprague were sweethearts or--lovers?"

It was a battle between those two now. Both ignored Tracey's red-faced
rage.

Flora licked her dry lips. "No--no," she whispered. "_No!_ It was
because I was jealous of Tracey and Nita--"

"Yes, and I'd given her cause to be jealous, too!" Tracey forced himself
into the conversation. "One night, at the Country Club, Flora saw me and
Nita stroll off the porch and down onto the grounds, and she had a right
to be sore at me when I got back, because I'd cut a dance with her--my
own wife!... And it was only this very morning that