"

He flushed. "Has Simmy Dodge been talking?"

"Simmy is your friend, George," she said sharply.

"It's always a fellow's friends who do the most talking," said he, "and
that's what hurts. You don't mind what your enemies say."

"Simmy has not mentioned your name to me in weeks."

"Well, I don't call that being friendly. He knows everything. He ought to
have told you just how rotten I've been, because you could believe Simmy.
You can't believe every one, Anne, but I know Simmy would give it to you
straight. Yes, I've been all that could be expected. The only thing I
haven't been is a liar."

"Can't you brace up, George? You are really the best of the lot, if you
only knew it. You--"

"I don't drink because I like it, you know, Anne," he said earnestly.

"I see," she said, nodding her head slowly. "You drink because it's the
surest way to prove to Lutie that you are still in love with her. Isn't
that it?" She spoke ironically.

"When I think how much you would have liked Lutie if she'd had a chance
to--"

"Don't tell it to me, George," she interrupted. "I didn't in the least
care whom you married. As a matter of fact, I think you married the right
girl."

"You do?" he cried eagerly.

"Yes. But she didn't marry the right man. If you had been the right man
and had been taken away from her as you were, she would have died of a
broken heart long before this. Logic for you, isn't it?"

"She's got too much sense to die of a broken heart. And that isn't saying
she wasn't in love with me, either."

"Oh, well," she sighed, "it doesn't matter. She didn't die, she didn't go
to the bad, she didn't put on a long face and weep her eyes out,--as I
recall them they were exceedingly pretty eyes, which may account for her
determination to spare them,--and she didn't do anything that a sensible
woman would have done under the circumstances. A sensible woman would have
set herself up as a martyr and bawled her eyes out. But Lutie, being an
ignoramus, overlooked her opportunities, and now see where she is! I am
told that she is exasperatingly virtuous, abstemious and exceedingly well-
dressed, and all on an income derived from thirty thousand dollars that
came out of the Tresslyn treasure chest. Almost incomprehensible, isn't
it? Nothing sensible about Lutie, is there?"

"Are you trying to be sarcastic, Anne?" demanded George, contriving to sit
up a little straighter on the sofa. He was not in the habit of exerting
himsel