New York, and intimated that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a little idiot not to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"

He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.

"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want - or rather-you take it, — and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces

"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem which couldn't be much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no end of fun making money, for you like to make money, and expect me to amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know enough to keep thin."

He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.

"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but you never broke loose this way before."

"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone. I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you cooks-and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get married again."

"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his breath.

"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting when I took you —

only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy-much happier than they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon. She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be tied all her life to her husband's apron strings or whatever he wears—and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."

Her husband got up.

"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my

life."

The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of determination he had never before heard or, at least, noticed.

There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it. He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.

"Howard - you'll knock over the lamp-you'll ruin my gown-and then you'll have to buy me another. I did mean it," she insisted, holding back her head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's-it's an ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily Dallam's tea —I won't tell you who they were - who would be glad to marry me in a minute."

He drew her down on the arm of his chair. "Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think you've got to have one."

"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be done with so narrow a front.

It's

all French, with mirrors and big white panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely turn around in it without knocking something down-a photograph frame or a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous, old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie Farwell could have made anything out of it."

says

"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband. "Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell? Lily was so lucky to get him she he wouldn't have done the house if he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this afternoon-only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't. She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house some day."

"Why not right away?" asked Howard.

"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied. "We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."

"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.

Honora sprang to her feet.

"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for dinner-and you'll never be ready."

"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition. Let's talk it over a little more-" "We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But

remember my ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."

"For my own good!"

"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and obscure and—and everything you promised not to be when you married me," she retorted

from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity. Wherewith she disappeared into her room and closed the door.

We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on which we have built is so firm that our own lares and penates are in no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock, but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.

Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had been in the Eighteenth Century-although it is doubtful whether he had ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which had as yet eluded him. And, above all, if the idea be put a little more crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected. Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might some day pack up and