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 talking to knew you had been forced to cut it to save your own neck? Wasn't I?"

"Oh, maybe . . . yes, yes . . . I guess you were, all right," her husband admitted wretchedly.

"Of course, I was, and that's the cruelest thing a man can do to a trusting wife, George Judson—allow her to make herself ridiculous in his behalf." A certain tenderness was permitted to enter into this reproach, and that softness bowled George Judson over completely.

"All right! Have it your own way. I was wrong all the time—all the time," he confessed, throwing up his hands and shaking his head with an expression of deep contrition.

But in such humility there was yet one other rod a truly conscientious wife could lay across his back, and she did not spare it.

"And besides—you've done something else, George," she accused with mournful emphasis. "You've shattered an idol and a tradition—short-lived, but oh, so brilliant while it lasted. I thought you were a superman. I thought anything you touched would succeed, just because it was you that touched it. I thought you were a miracle-worker. You're not. You're just an ordinary, blindly optimistic blunderer whom so far luck has favored. I'm disappointed in you, George; that's the sum and substance of it all; I'm disappointed in you."