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 ing glance to his companion, and Lanice knew that, in spite of her thinness and her fits of pallor, he had seen through her and knew her to be beautifully healthy and sound. He edged towards her slightly and she delicately edged away.

'I suppose,' she said demurely, 'marriage can be a very happy state.'

'Oh, my dear Miss Bardeen. It is the only one for most of us. There are a few exotic, perverse, and often unhappy creatures who can live best without it. I am sure Anthony Jones never either put anything into his marriage or got anything out.'

The sacred name had been spoken. Lanice tightened invisibly and wondered if she could trust her voice to question further.

'Do steal me another of Dr. Paisley's peppermints.' With this ball to click against her teeth she dared continue.

'The idea of Captain Jones as a family man is indeed a droll one—did it occur before or after he left India for Arabia?'

'Two or three years before. She was his colonel's daughter—charming, of course, or she never would have attracted Jones in the first place, but I fear of a very nun-like and cold temperament. I'm afraid Jones really scandalized Henry Longfellow the night we all dined together at the Red Horse Tavern by the frankness with which he protested that our civilization to-day makes women so pure it unfits them for matrimony—and then rather—ah, caddishly, referred to his own wife. There is a streak of almost