Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/113

 "No."

"Well," Tinker said pensively, "of course it's the natural condition, and I've got a mighty splendid wife—I've never been sorry I didn't stop and think twice before we got things settled—but there are a few times in any married man's life when he probably ought to have a little more liberty than he's liable to actually get. It don't seem like it's in a woman's disposition to allow it to him." He coughed and seemed to ruminate as they rounded the forward windows of the "Palm Garden" and passed to the starboard promenade deck and the sunshine. "I suppose there's probably some women in the world could understand a man's nature, but likely it's only a few. I expect that one there could, maybe;—anyhow she acts like it to me."

The lady to whom he referred was alone, reclining in a deck chair at a little distance before them; she was wrapped luxuriously in a coat of minks' fur and reading a little book exquisitely bound in green and gold. Ogle had an impulse to turn and run, rather than that she should see him with Tinker, whom the smoking-room episode, if nothing else, must necessarily have rendered offensive to her sight. For the lady was Mme. Momoro.