he never forgot.

And all the while Ruthven squirmed under the light but steadily
inflexible pressure of the curb which Neergard had slipped on him so
deftly; he had viewed with indifference Gerald's boyish devotion to his
wife, which was even too open and naive to be of interest to those who
witnessed it. But he had not counted on Neergard's sudden hatred of
Gerald; and the first token of that hatred fell upon the boy like a
thunderbolt when Neergard whispered to Ruthven, one night at the
Stuyvesant Club, and Ruthven, exasperated, had gone straight home, to
find his wife in tears, and the boy clumsily attempting to comfort her,
both her hands in his.

"Perhaps," said Ruthven coldly, "you have some plausible explanation for
this sort of thing. If you haven't, you'd better trump up one together,
and I'll send you my attorney to hear it. In that event," he added,
"you'd better leave your joint address when you find a more convenient
house than mine."

As a matter of fact, he had really meant nothing more than the threat
and the insult, the situation permitting him a heavier hold upon his
wife and a new grip on Gerald in case he ever needed him; but threat and
insult were very real to the boy, and he knocked Mr. Ruthven flat on his
back--the one thing required to change that gentleman's pretence to
deadly earnest.

Ruthven scrambled to his feet; Gerald did it again; and, after that, Mr.
Ruthven prudently remained prone during the delivery of a terse but
concise opinion of him expressed by Gerald.

After Gerald had gone, Ruthven opened first one eye, then the other,
then his mouth, and finally sat up; and his wife, who had been curiously
observing him, smiled.

"It is strange," she said serenely, "that I never thought of that
method. I wonder why I never thought of it," lazily stretching her firm
young arms and glancing casually at their symmetry and smooth-skinned
strength. "Go into your own quarters," she added, as he rose, shaking
with fury: "I've endured the last brutality I shall ever suffer from
you."

She dropped her folded hands into her lap, gazing coolly at him; but
there was a glitter in her eyes which arrested his first step toward
her.

"I think," she said, "that you mean my ruin. Well, we began it long ago,
and I doubt if I have anything of infamy to learn, thanks to my thorough
schooling as your wife. . . . But knowledge is not necessarily practice,
and it happens that I have not cared to commit th