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 licited. Nor was it as though the stream of information about the Englishman had gone dry. It was merely that Fay's bath was ready; she had gone, and George was left alone to stare musingly out the window while a maid was in the room laying out garments, with sounds of splashing water and then the patter of a shower issuing from around the corner. The husband's mind was at once inevitably back upon his business. He was reviewing the situation, analyzing his recent response to his wife's inquiry, and reasoning that he really must break the news of real conditions to her—in justice to her he must, and now was the time.

But it was with a start of fear that he realized her presence in the room once more. She was darting to and fro between the laid-out garments on her dressing table and the cheval glass, uttering the while those little bursts and trills of song that marked her more ecstatic moods. Once or twice she burst out whistling. How he did like to hear her whistle!

"Pretty mean kind of runt, a man is," he decided, "if he's got to come home and spoil his wife's happiness by babbling about his business troubles. You bet I won't tell her."

Yet he hurried to the office the next morning with a consciousness of having missed something—a boon which his wife might have supplied to him and had not. Unreasonably, unknown to