ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

It was his great arms that lifted her feather-weight with
extraordinary sureness and gentleness _Frontispiece_

Where the lonely figure in black and white sat brooding 64

Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, handled the cleek 78

He drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs 186

"Go! You're nothing but a brute" 228

Before I realized the danger . . . I was flung aside 300

And there, in a wilderness of ransacked drawers and
strewn papers, . . . lay a tiny, black, moaning
heap of a woman 316

There is war going on in the Balkans. Jaffery is there
as war correspondent. Liosha is there, too 350

THE
WILLIAM J. LOCKE
YEAR-BOOK

A _bon-mot_ for each day in
every year, selected from
this popular author's works.

_Decorated Cloth. $1.00 net_

CHAPTER I

I received a letter the day before yesterday from my old friend, Jaffery
Chayne, which has inspired me to write the following account of that
dear, bull-headed, Pantagruelian being. I must say that I have been
egged on to do so by my wife, of whom hereafter. A man of my somewhat
urbane and dilettante temperament does not do these things without being
worried into them. I had the inspiration, however. I told Barbara (my
wife), and she agreed, at the time, dutifully, that I ought to record
our friend Jaffery's doings. But now, womanlike, she declares that the
first suggestion, the root germ of the idea, came from her; that the
"egging on" is merely the vain man's way of misdefining a woman's serene
insistence; that she has given me, out of her intimate knowledge, all
the facts of the story--although Jaffery Chayne and Adrian Boldero and
poor Tom Castleton, and others involved in the imbroglio, counted
themselves as my bosom cronies, while she, poor wretch (a man must get
home somewhere), was in the nursery; and that, finally, if she had been
taught English grammar and spelling at school, she would have dispensed
entirely with my pedantic assistance and written the story herself.
Anyhow, man-like, I am broad minded enough to proclaim that it doesn't
very much matter. Man and wife are one. She thinks they are one wife. I
know they are one husband. Between speculation and knowl