sion--the one you were just speaking of
as--as the oldest. As Doctor Randolph says, she's cashed in on her
ankles. But maybe you're mistaken in thinking she wouldn't choose
something else if she had a chance. Maybe she wouldn't have done it,
except because her husband wanted her to and she was in love with him
and tried to please. You can't always tell."

It was almost her first contribution to the talk that evening. She had
asked a few questions and said the things a hostess has to say. The
other three were manifestly taken by surprise--Rodney as well as his
guests.

But surprise was not the only effect she produced. Her husband had never
seen her look just like that before (remember, he had not been a guest
at the Randolphs' dinner on the night he had turned her out of his
office), the flash in her eyes, the splash of bright color in her
cheeks.

Barry saved him the necessity of trying to answer, by taking up the
cudgels himself. Rodney didn't feel like answering, nor, for the moment,
like listening to Barry. His interest in the discussion was eclipsed for
the moment, by the thrill and wonder of his wife's beauty.

He walked round behind her chair, on the pretext of getting his coffee
cup, and rested his hand, for an instant, on her bare shoulder. He was
puzzled at the absence of response to the caress. For there was none,
unless you could call it a response that she sat as still as ivory until
he took his hand away. And looking into her face, he thought she had
gone pale. Evidently though, it was nothing. Her color came back in a
moment, and for the next half-hour she matched wits with Barry Lake very
prettily.

When Jane declared that they must go, her husband protested.

"I haven't managed yet to get a word out of Rodney about any of his
things. He dodged when I asked him how his Criminal Procedure Reform
Society was getting on, and he changed the subject when I wanted to know
about his model Expert Testimony Act." He turned on Rodney. "But there's
one thing you're not going to get out of. I want to know how far you've
come along with your book on Actual Government. It was a great start you
had on that, and a bully plan. I shan't let you off any details. I want
the whole thing. Now."

"I've had my fling," said Rodney, with a sort of embarrassed good humor.
"And I don't say I shall never have another. But just now, there are no
more intellectual wild-oats for me. What I sow, I sow in a field and in
a furrow