tion gently, almost cautiously.

He reflected a little. "Why--no," he answered, as if reasoning to
himself. "Of course I'm not. This is what I've always wanted. It's my
idea of life to a 't.' Only--I suppose everything needs a break in it
now and then--if only for the comfort of getting back into the old rut
again."

"The rut--yes," she commented, musingly. "Apparently there's always a
rut."

Thorpe gave her the mystified yet uncomplaining glance she knew so well
in his eyes. For once, the impulse to throw hidden things up into his
range of view prevailed with her.

"Do you know," she said, with a confused half-smile at the novelty of
her mood for elucidation, "I fancied a rut was the one thing there could
be no question about with you. I had the notion that you were incapable
of ruts--and conventional grooves. I thought you--as Carlyle puts it--I
thought you were a man who had swallowed all the formulas."

Thorpe looked down at his stomach doubtfully. "I see what you mean," he
said at last, but in a tone without any note of conviction.

"I doubt it," she told him, with light readiness--"for I don't see
myself what I mean. I forget indeed what it was I said. And so you think
you'll go up to town tonight?"

A sudden comprehension of what was slipping away from his grasp aroused
him. "No--no," he urged her, "don't forget what it was you said! I wish
you'd talk more with me about that. It was what I wanted to hear. You
never tell me what you're really thinking about." She received the
reproach with a mildly incredulous smile in her eyes. "Yes--I know--who
was it used to scold me about that? Oh"--she seemed suddenly reminded of
something--"I was forgetting to mention it. I have a letter from Celia
Madden. She is back in England; she is coming to us Saturday, too."

He put out his lips a trifle. "That's all right," he objected, "but what
has it got to do with what we were talking about?"

"Talking about?" she queried, with a momentarily blank countenance. "Oh,
she used to bully me about my deceit, and treachery, and similar crimes.
But I shall be immensely glad to see her. I always fight with her, but I
think I like her better than any other woman alive."

"I like her too," Thorpe was impelled to say, with a kind of solemnity.
"She reminds me of some of the happiest hours in my life."

His wife, after a brief glance into his face, laughed pleasantly, if
with a trace of flippancy. "You say nice things," she observ